Here We Go

"Here We Go" - Mat Kearney

I get that this is a "romantical" song, but I'm taking it somewhere else, just so you know.

I've been pondering the friend thing a lot lately, and I guess I'm going to continue to ponder it because it's been on my mind.

"Oh, oh, here we go again, I know how I lost a friend."

People aren't lying when they say that it's so much harder to make friends as you get older (i.e. out of school). I've read articles and blogs and who-knows-what-else all talking about how it's just so different out in the world of making friends in adulthood.

I was really, really lucky to have had the first job I had out of school - I worked with one of the most incredible people, and it showed me how much having a friend to work with makes your job so much easier. She and I just clicked for some reason. We had similar interests and, I like to think, a similar outlook on life. We knew when things were important and mostly we knew how to cut up with each other. Many fun girls-nights-out were had and many laughs were shared. Then we both got different jobs, and staying in touch has become so much harder.

Again, that's where this whole issue of time and energy and me being a crappy friend comes into play. Where are all the hours in the day?! Why do they go by so fast?

So, flash-forward to current job circa three days ago, and I get blindsided.

The person who has trained me, and for all intents and purposes is the only person I really work with, has found another job. Still with the same company but in a different department. It was like a punch to the gut. I felt sick the entire day after she told me, and I tried all day not to start bawling at work.

It's all cyclical. My good friend from my first job had to leave because of financial reasons, and my job went south not too long after that. Then, I turned and left once a new person was hired. Not intentionally planned that way, but also for financial reasons.

So, with my friend now leaving at my current job, I see it as a kind of karma since I had done the same thing before taking this job.

I shouldn't take it personally, but it's hard to think that it's not something that I did. I feel like it's somehow my fault. And then there's the whole thing about how I'm going to be the one that people ask questions now. And I don't feel uber comfortable with that.

It's been stressful and emotional.

And I'm getting more and more nervous about National Novel Writing Month. When I first found out about my friend leaving, I immediately thought about all the overtime hours I'm going to have to work and how that will definitely cut into my writing time and zap my energy. But I NEED to do this. I HAVE to do this. And If I'm only getting 3 hours of sleep a night in November, so be it. This damn novel has got to be written.


Postscript: "Here She Comes" by Low Millions got skipped over tonight because I just wasn't feeling it right now. Honorable mention, I guess.

Here Is Gone

"Here Is Gone" - Goo Goo Dolls

(Subtitled in Spanish, no less)

My love for the Goo Goo Dolls has waxed and waned over the years, mainly waning with some of the newer stuff they've put out. But I've always loved their older stuff. This one fell kind of in the middle, and for some reason, I've always seen it as one of their darker songs.

"I thought I'd lost you somewhere, but you were never really ever there at all."

I've been thinking a lot about the people we are and the people we create around us. One of the strangest moments in my life was spending a good amount of time with someone that I thought I was getting to know pretty well, and then spent a 45-minute car ride with them and never felt further from anyone in my life. I had no previous experience or feeling to attach it to. It was such an unknown feeling to me - the physical distance so small but the connection between us so far apart.

I think a lot about people I've known and don't keep in contact with anymore. Funny thing is, one of my friends was just recently talking about this same thing. It's so difficult to maintain friendships over time and distance. It's not that the feelings necessarily lessen, but time wedges its way between you, and before you know it, it's weeks or months or years since you've spoken.

Why do we let life get in the way? I have no good excuse for it. All I know is that it's so hard to have the energy to do damn near anything after spending eight and a half hours at work, coming home, attempting to get the house in order and cooking dinner. It's pretty much snoozefest from there on out.

On some level, too, I guess I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm not really doing anything too exciting with my life at the moment. What big news do I have to share? What great things am I doing with my life? Well, nothing, really. I don't want to be the Debbie Downer of the conversation.

Someone close to me is going through a breakup right now, and I wish I had better advice. Or maybe that I'd be a better listener or be able to support them in just the right way. I don't, I'm not, and I'm probably not doing that either, but I'm trying. We've all been there. And it's so hard to see beyond that moment. Nothing else matters, you start to obsess over it, you stop doing basic things like eating regularly. It's horrid, really. But it just takes time, I think. There's no way that you can wake up the next morning and feel great. You just can't. And you want to help your friend and you want to give just the right advice, but in the end, time is the only thing that can really heal.

Heal and destroy all at once. Isn't that funny?

Here I Go Again

"Here I Go Again" - Whitesnake

"This is my JAM" is probably one of my most-used phrases, right up there with "Cool beans," and "What the shit?" But when I say, "This is my jam" about this song, I really mean it.

Back in the days of my good ol' 97 Mercury Tracer, this song made the mixtape that played in the tape deck. (Yes, you heard that right - tape deck). I started a lot of mornings driving to high school with this song blaring out of the one speaker that actually worked.

You see, in all actuality, I'm pretty much the opposite of a badass. I'm pretty much a square. I follow the rules, drive the speed limit, listen to (most of) what my Mom says, and generally just worry too much about what other people think of me or worry if I'm doing something right. What can I say? I'm driven by a need to not be a screw-up.

But this song makes me forget all that. I listen to this song, and I'm a badass.

Yeah..."Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone, and I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time, here I go again."

Life kicks you down. You get back up, and you kick life right back. That's what I take from this song, anyway. AND I LOVE IT.

Song Project - Hannah

It's the first day of October, and I haven't blogged in a century.

I've been listening to my music library on my iPod at work, song by song, in alphabetical order. I'm not sure when I started, but I'm currently in the Os. When I hit H, I decided I should start writing down the songs that really stuck out to me, for any number of reasons. And then I thought, "Well, I'm sitting here for seven and a half hours every day having these thoughts about all these songs, why not write them down?" And so developed the idea of the song-based blog.

Not a new idea, really. I'm sure if you followed me in the past, you know I have a history of blogging about songs. But it's been a damn long time since I've done it and never this extensively. I feel I need to show a little love to the songs that I don't give quite as much attention to, and of course, to the ones that I shout about from the mountaintops, too.

It has been far, far, far too long since I've really sat down and written. I think about writing pen-and-paper style every single day, but somehow that seems more intimate and frightening than blogging. Go figure. Guess I'm not quite brave enough to be alone with my own thoughts, yet.

However, this is the first of October, and that means that the first of November is one month away. Ever since hearing about NaNoWriMo from my friend Rena in college, I have always wanted to do it, and it starts the first of November. As I haven't flexed my writing muscles in ages, I thought a good ol' blog-post-a-day would help warm them up a bit and maybe get me prepared to start on National Novel Writing Month. Who knows if I'll finish, but I just have to try.

I think about writing every single day, but there's something that just so intimidating about it. Probably because I'm trying to look at it on the whole instead of in tiny pieces. It's pretty terrifying to think about having a novel written and how badly it will probably turn out at the end, but I've just got to do it. Once the first one is out of the way, all the rest will be easy, right?

Another major stumbling block has been what to write about. I have several ideas, of course, but they all are going to require more than just skimming the surface. They're going to require some digging under the foundation, some excavating, and you better believe some skeletons are going to be unearthed. That's pretty damn scary, if you ask me.

So, anyway, back to the song project. Something I've been known to do in the past, something I plan to do in earnest, at least in the next month, to prepare me for getting that first book written. Of course, I won't get through all the songs I've written down if I only write about one song every day, but hopefully I'll come back 'round to it once NaNoWriMo is complete.

And so...

Hannah - Ray LaMontagne

I re-organized and integrated some still-boxed-up CDs last night and started reflecting on how much music my friends have given me. It's incredible, really. A whole, whole lot of music has been passed on to me by others, and Ray LaMontagne is no exception. This song was on a mixed CD I was given, and as it started playing after some other just okay songs, I thought, "Wait. Stop. What was that? Play it again". As I do with songs I immediately connect with, I listened to it over and over and over.

I can't pretend to know what the story is about, and for as many times as I've listened to it, I honestly still haven't figured it out. But the sorrow and the hope.

"I'd walk one mile on just broken glass, to fall down at your feet."

It puts you on both sides of the song almost all at once. You feel for him, and you are him. You've been there. You feel his sorrow, and it's your sorrow at the same time.

It's a song that seems intensely personal to the writer but is open enough to have the listener pour their own experiences into it.

And that's some damn good songwriting, if you ask me.