COVID Losses Of The Future

The worst thing about this pandemic is knowing that when it's all over and when we can go visit each other again, there will be less people who will want to spend time with me.

I've taken a fairly hardline 'pro-mask' stance. I'm quite private on most all of my 'political' leanings, but I have watched too many young people die of lung failure to be quiet about this one. Wear. A. Mask. It's not that hard, and no, it will not kill you.

Of course, this apparently does not sit well with what's left of my extended family. I've had several relatives unfriend me already, and no doubt the rest won't be speaking to me after this. My husband and I were planning to have a reception next year and inviting all those who we had wanted to invite to our wedding before COVID regulations destroyed our guest list. But now, looking at the list, I wonder if any of them will even come. I would still love to invite them, but there's also the knowledge that they would rather put their conspiracy-theory-worship above their love for their immunocompromised friends and family (read: me). And there's also the knowledge that I've clashed with some of them on social media and the way people are these days, they probably won't want anything to do with me.

I've lost over half of my extended family already to death, divorce, and petty disputes. I'm so used to loss by now that you'd think I wouldn't feel anything, but I would very much be lying if I said it didn't still hurt to be excommunicated by the people who once said they would do anything for me.

COVID will fade, but I know from experience that the pain of loss never does.

An Ode To OG Girlpop

Yesterday my husband and I got talking about the first-ever cassettes we bought, and it unlocked a memory that I hadn't even thought to recall in probably ten years.

I was seven years old and it was ZOEgirl's self-titled album. I was such a music nerd even then that I remember my sister purchasing Raze's Power on the same day (she always had cooler taste than me at that age -- I definitely listen to Raze far more than ZOEgirl today). Young as I was, I already owned several cassettes -- mixtapes that my dad and I had collaborated on in front of his big stereo system that occupied a more central place in our living room than the television. To own my own real, honest-to-goodness cassette album was a special thing indeed. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the hardware store (my parents had wisely taken us to buy music first and then gone to spend 45 minutes at the hardware store after we had a distraction in our hands -- and yes, music was a sufficient distraction for both my sister and me), and reading the liner notes -- all the lyrics, the credits, everything. I read the copyright year on the spine, the way my dad had showed me on his own albums at home. I was only just beginning to understand the concept of years (as in, we are currently living in the year 2021), but I knew the year 2000 meant it was a new album (I did not yet know that this would be one of maybe a dozen albums that I would actually buy new over the course of my life -- the overwhelming majority of the music I've bought since then has had copyright years beginning with the number '19').

Naturally, I played that ZOEgirl album a lot. When I ventured into that dusty section of my iTunes this morning following my husband's question, I found that not one word escaped my memory despite the 'last played' date being May 2017 (exactly four years and one day earlier, in fact).

Was ZOEgirl great? No. If you don't have memories attached to them, they're probably pretty forgettable. But to us Christian girls of the early 2000s, they expressed the faith we were being raised in in a way we could relate to (and, most importantly for some of us, dance to). Even listening to them today was a breath of fresh air in the current collective spritual climate of doubt, anger, and cynicism. The songs, especially on this debut album, describe life as a Christian with a simplicity and joy that I have not seen or felt in Christiandom in a very long time. Every song points to Christ alone -- not works, not 'goodness,' not pedigree, not strength. Every. Song. And every song speaks of God with joy, adoration, and complete trust. There were mainstream CCM bands at the time with far worse theology than this flash-in-the-pan girl-pop band aimed at teenyboppers (back when 'teenybopper' was a serious designation for a specific subculture). Perhaps I should have been less surprised to see singer/songwriter Alisa Childers on the front lines of contemporary Biblically-sound theology twenty years after the release of this album.

Is the music dated? Definitely. In terms of production and instrumentation, this fits in squarely with acts like Aqua or Jump5. Is this a bad thing? Not to me. It takes me right back to the simplicity and joy of my childhood before my mom's depression got bad -- back in the very early days when she was able to be properly present with us. The light, sparkling music also accentuates the purity of the message ZOEgirl was presenting. It's also still very definitely danceable (which, along with 'do the lyrics assume I actually own a brain?' is my personal litmus test).

ZOEgirl is a product of their time, for certain, but it's hard to find an act so pure, even in that era. For that, they deserve a second look. They're still not even in my top 100 favourite artists of all time (although they might have a chance at number 100 if Terry Scott Taylor didn't have so many bands loading up the top of the list). But they will remain firmly entrenched in my memory and in my iPod for what they were able to give a mature-for-her-age girly-girl music-nerd seven-year-old.

Lost The Plot

Today would have been M's 25th birthday.

I've talked at length about how my writing and choreographic output just simply dried up after her death and I'm not sure either will ever come back.

I lost myself after she and Brittney died. I was such a highly creative person then, and without them to spur me on, I have zero motivation for anything. I made a half-hearted 'goals for 2021' list back in late January, and I have accomplished exactly none of them. In past years I would post huge goals on this very blog, and while I never accomplished all of them, I always managed a good chunk of them. But today I looked at that 2021 list and I realised I have no real reason to do any of that. I know the process of choreographing all those dances used to bring me joy, but now it feels pointless. Why create it? No-one will see it, no-one will like it, no-one will even care that it exists. Without M and Brittney to make the process exciting and crazy, even the journey isn't fun anymore. Maybe that was why I loved it back then -- the journey used to be fun and exciting, and it's not fun to do creative things alone and unsupported.

I feel adrift, numb, and so, so weary. I feel like there's nothing left for me to do, although the very fact that I'm still alive despite three (serious) attempts to not be should be proof alone that there is in fact something left for me to do. But right now I can't think what the world might need that somebody else couldn't do much better.

M was a breath of fresh air, bright, exuberant, energetic, passionate. Even on her bad days her drive and determination were inspiring, and she created so many opportunities for herself and for others. She was singlehandedly responsible for a lot of performances of my early choreography. I always wished I could be as driven and determined and successful as she was. And now I'm just too worn out from life to even try anymore. I want to follow her to where she is, where expectations don't strangle people, where souls don't silently die while their shells shuffle on. Why bother with anything here?

But if I'm meant to still do something, them what? And why? I don't know if I even have the energy to find the answer.

Happy birthday, M. I miss you so much.

Enough

I'm just so tired of not being enough for anyone.
I'm not quick enough, smart enough, flexible enough, spending enough, saving enough, talking enough, thinking enough, smiling enough, cheerful enough, nice enough, considerate enough, tall enough, friendly enough, and the general consensus is I'm sure as heck not trying hard enough to be any of these things.

Listen to me. I developed an eating disorder at age 25 because I was spending every last single second of my existence in the dance studio trying desperately to prove once and for all, that I actually WAS trying hard enough. I had no time to eat because every SECOND that I didn't spend in the studio practicing was proof that I was nothing but a third-string deadbeat delusional failure and a total waste of skin. I was being told every. single. day that I wasn't trying hard enough and how DARE I call myself a performer. I literally almost killed myself trying to prove that I actually WAS trying.

And honestly, I'm still there. In every single aspect of my life, not just dance.

I'm still bleeding myself dry, hoping against hope that maybe the next gallon will be enough. Or the next. Or the next. And I am stubborn enough to literally bleed myself dry if that will convince someone, anyone that I'M ACTUALLY F*CKING TRYING.

I'm so tired. I'm so, so tired.

100

Today I officially finished my 100th piece of choreography.

I actually thought this would happen much sooner. The early years of choreography were so prolific -- right up until college, I would literally choreograph for hours at a time, every single day. I think after the first year, I was up to 60-some completed projects. This obviously slowed down when college got into the mix, but I never truly stopped.

Until M died.

After that, I hit a wall, both in writing and in dance. M was my creative partner for both, and without her, life felt completely void of -- well, life. She died in September 2018, and in the next two years I choreographed maybe five pieces. All of them were like pulling teeth. She had been my only real source of choreographic inspiration and encouragement, and without that, there was no reason to push myself to keep creating these hack jobs, these robotic simulations of feeling that really meant nothing. All my work felt boring and repetitive.

I keep track of my completed choreography by putting the songs in an iTunes playlist and by entering the titles into a Pages document, along with the dates of completion. When I added that song to the playlist today and saw the little words '100 songs' at the bottom of the iTunes window, I felt immediately driven to message M and tell her about my milestone, like I did with most all my choreography/writing-related accomplishments.

But I couldn't. And there was no-one else still alive who would get how truly, fantastically exciting this was. M would have freaked out -- enthusiastic run-on sentences in all caps, loudly proclaiming my achievement, even though her output far outpaced mine. I never realised how much her zany excitement motivated me until it wasn't there anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of myself. It took nine years to get here, and for this chronic procrastinator to actually finish 100 pieces is a huge milestone. (Plus there's the saying that you have to do a thing a hundred times to be good at it... so I guess I've leveled up now?) I started seriously choreographing in earnest in an attempt to prove my mother wrong when she said I didn't want it enough. A hundred pieces -- some 1,100 hand-notated pages -- later, I'd like to think I've made my point. But my excitement is tempered by not being able to share it with the one person in my life who really cared about me choreographing stuff.

Here's to the next 100 pieces. Hopefully there's less loss to dance about.

The Long Lonely Crisis

Originally written early 2018.

This is something that's been on my mind for a while now.

(Trigger warning -- suicide.)

Most of you probably know that I attempted suicide in March 2017. A month later I finally had the opportunity to ask for help and subsequently began counselling. I 'stabilised' -- in theory. But you know when the suicidal thoughts were at their absolute worst? Do you know when I was the closest to ending my life?

It was eight months later -- November 2017.

I was still in counselling once a week. I was still attending all my classes. I continued my rigorous practice schedule. But in late October there had been a serious incident involving a close friend of mine and that was all it took to break me. The fragile progress I'd made vapourised in the aftermath of one horrible text. I doubled the frequency of my counselling appointments in the wake of what had happened but I would still go back to the house for lunch every day and sit there in the living room, staring out the window, visibly shaking, rage coursing through every capillary in my body, literally not even sure if I would survive the next twenty minutes or if I would snap and end it before then.

When I attempted suicide in March 2017, that was actually a more spur-of-the-moment thing. Certainly the anger and frustration that triggered it had been building for some time, but I didn't sit there and plan it that day. I didn't even really realise that I was about to attempt suicide until my feet were already moving. But in November, I was literally planning it out in my head... the details of what I would do, how I would do it, and -- most importantly -- the reactions of others ('maybe then someone would finally be sad for me'). You're not supposed to give those thoughts space and I knew that, but I was too completely, utterly exhausted/spent/depleted/frustrated/beat down to steer them in another direction. All I had the energy to do was just sit and let them run their course, winding my nerves tighter and tighter, increasing my internal tension to the breaking point.

From my counselling, I knew that I should say something. Text someone. Go to a friend's house. Call 911 if necessary (I knew I would not survive the drive to the hospital if I tried to drive myself). That May, when I had started telling people close to me about my attempt in March, they had all said things like, 'you can talk to me if you need it.' They spent time with me, checked in on me, told me I needed to live -- for a while.

But when I hit bottom in November 2017, I never called anybody. I didn't send any texts. You know why?

Because the phrase 'I'm here for you' has an expiration date. Always. I'd learned that after my cousin's death in 2015, and I knew I'd passed that date. Quite a few of those people who had been so concerned in the weeks following my March attempt had already, by November of that same year, told me I was wallowing too much (as if one can 'wallow' in a medical condition that's outside of their control!). I knew if I tried to contact anybody -- including those that helped me the first time around -- they would just assume I was looking for attention or perhaps overreacting. 'You've been in counselling. You know people care about you. That was months ago -- why are you still not better yet? Why aren't you trying hard enough?'

I knew my condition was serious, but I had no way of convincing anybody else that it was. I'd been in treatment for seven months. I was supposed to be better, right? And if I wasn't better yet, then obviously it was all my fault. I wasn't trying hard enough. And nobody wants anybody to do with somebody who's 'lazy' and 'doesn't try...' (Perhaps it is better for that person to be dead...?) (Don't tell me you're not thinking this sometimes when I'm struggling and seem exceptionally needy.)

Listen to me, just for a moment. Recovery is not linear. Recovery is not instant. Let me say this again -- recovery is not instant.

Please get this.

There is no quick fix for depression. Yes, there is counselling, and yes, there is medication, but neither of these are quick fixes, and neither of these is guaranteed. At this moment in history, depression is incurable. If you don't understand this, you cannot say you understand depression. You cannot understand the weight of knowing there is no end to the fight, ever, for the rest of your life. Recovery -- especially from a suicide attempt -- can take years. Literal, calendar years. And if you say you're going to be there for us through that time of picking up the pieces, you need to realise how long that really is. It's long. And it's hard. And it's slow. And it's lonely. And it feels pointless. And because we're already depleted from actually getting to the cliff edge of our lives and clawing our way back up over the edge of our own demise, we don't have a lot of strength left. It's like how you're depleted and listless after a flu -- it takes time to get your strength back. In the very earliest days of my 'recovery' (April 2017), I had zero will to live -- I was in fact still actively planning to die. It took a lot of people pouring their determination into me for a long time (we're talking every single day for months) before I began to even reflect any of it myself (it took even longer than that for any of that determination to truly get inside me). I have said of one friend who was there at that time that she fought harder for my life than I did. I had well and truly given up the ghost, but it was people like her who doggedly insisted that I needed to live and stayed close to me to ensure that I did.

But the thing is, over time, they begin to drift away. They think you're better and they begin to drift away and assume you're in remission. But just because the initial emergency has passed doesn't mean that you're cured. You're now at 20% battery instead of 1%, which is of course an improvement, but that 20% can -- and does -- get depleted quickly. Meanwhile everyone assumes that you're now permanently at 100% and gets upset with you if you so much as hint that you aren't.

A crisis is not solved (though, yes, it can sometimes be temporarily alleviated) with a ten-minute text friend-therapy session. A mental health crisis can last -- even with treatment -- for years. The suicidal thoughts that nearly killed me in 2017 actually started in early 2015. I was in full-blown crisis for two years -- BEFORE I even made an attempt. And don't make the mistake of thinking it the crisis ends immediately after one attempt (even with treatment).

Even now, there are still more dark days than I let on. There are fewer now than there were in November 2017, yes, but there are still days where I am frustrated and lonely and feeling like nothing I ever do will be worth any of the time I'm putting into it and I start thinking, 'why even bother?' Because of my personal history with this cocktail of depression/perfectionism/suicidal ideation, this little phrase alone opens the floodgates to dark things very quickly -- as soon as that question comes up, I can go from neutral to suicidal in literal seconds. It's such a fast slide that I often don't even realise it's happening until I'm already planning what my imminent death will look like. Basically, because I've been to the edge of suicide before, it means I can wind up back in that state easier and faster than others who have never attempted. It's become a sort of muscle memory.

But I consistently don't contact anyone because I know that nobody is going to take me seriously -- they're just going to roll their eyes and ask why I'm not trying harder. I've gone through a lot this past year, but I kept pretending I was fine. At the moment that's doable. But if I start sliding again, that means I'm not going to contact anybody.

This is why checking in is SO imperative, even if somebody looks fine. If we don't feel safe to say we're struggling, a lot of times we simply won't. And that's dangerous... it means we won't warn you, we'll just fire the fatal shot and hope someone cares enough to bury the body.

Lightning In A Bottle

Lately my choreographic motivation has begun to awaken from its long slumber (of course it's when I don't have access to a studio to work stuff out in, but I'm not going to complain too much -- I'll take the ideas, please). To give it something to do, I've been notating the ballets that I sketched out but never notated, going back to 2017. (Don't worry, it's only like five pieces... I haven't choreographed much ballet since I started college.)

This included my solo for Terry Scott Taylor's heart-wrenching One More Time, choregraphed in two days in the immediate aftermath of M's death. I found my notes for the piece, but the ending seemed incomplete. I knew I had finished choreographing it, as I remembered performing it live on Instagram (to resounding silence, as nearly everybody at college either didn't give one crap about dance or didn't think I was talented enough to bother doing it) and filming the performance on my video camera at the same time. So tonight, I dug out that memory card and found the video.

And I was stunned.

It was filmed 2 October 2018, and I found two rehearsal takes from the day before. In 2018, I was starting my fourth year of college, having been told by my program director at the beginning of the school year that I had exactly one (1) chance to 'prove myself' (whatever that meant, and no, he did not deign to tell me) or he would be, and I quote, "done with you." I would routinely beat myself up -- mentally and physically -- in the studio and at home because I was so deeply, profoundly angry at myself for continually failing to measure up to his expectations -- whatever the hell they even were. I had yet to decode them after four years, but I felt no end stupid for not having done so, despite the fact that he was the one not communicating clearly. My self-confidence waned steadily throughout my time at college, as a direct result of the way he and the instructors under him treated me. Because of how much they hated me and my work, I began to hate the way I danced, and by extension, I hated myself. In a way, I was jealous of M for escaping this terrible world and all the pressure of perfection before I did. Now I had -- and still have -- to face all that belittling and pressure alone. After I performed/filmed this solo, I never watched it, knowing I would just hate myself more for not being a good enough dancer to justify doing that dance.

Today when I watched it, I saw this young woman with a grace and tenderness that I could only dream of even now. There's an absolutely luscious back bend in there -- I thought if I lived to be a hundred I could never be flexible enough to do something so beautiful. Even in the rehearsal videos she looked like a professional dancer. The courus were perfect. Her arms just floated, absolutely effortlessly. The lines were perfect -- I made a goal at the beginning of this year to work on my lines, but after seeing this video, I'm wondering if I really ever needed to work on them at all. There was a section in the 'performance' that did feel a bit more staccato than it was in rehearsal, but the pure artistry overshadowed that. I think it may have been the most beautiful ballet I have ever watched.

Did I just capture lightning in a bottle? Was it all just a fluke? Or was I really that good all along and nobody was decent enough to actually tell me? I choreographed, learned, and performed this piece in literally two days. This was before I learned an entire staging of Oklahoma! and the second acts of Jesus Christ Superstar and Chicago in essentially a week (side note, do all theatre companies literally spend five months on Act I and then stage/choreograph ALL of Act II in one three-hour rehearsal or is this just the companies I end up working with?).

I'm still deciding what to do with this footage. It is incredible -- to my eyes, anyway. But it's also rehearsal footage, and I don't like posting full rehearsals of pieces I do want to make into an official video someday -- spoilers, you know. I would love to film this properly, but I don't have access to any studio or even a space large enough to do it. So do I just sit on this footage and wait, possibly several more years, before I can properly film it? Then comes the question 'what if it's not as good?' I'm not getting any younger (or more flexible)...

Either way, it encouraged me so much. At least I can watch and enjoy this video. It touched my heart, it truly did. If I do decide to post it somewhere, I'll link it here.

Day 23: National Choreography Month

Finished the Queen song and now I'm getting back to my choreographic roots with a large-group White Heart number -- specifically Heaven Of My Heart (1993).

I think this one comes out of some of the emotional background of Who Wants To Live Forever -- that weight of nostalgia, that longing for another world. I'm still so tired of being here. I'm not suicidal, most of the time, just weary... this breathtaking, soul-scarring, heartbreaking, physically heavy weariness, this bone-crushing, mind-melting nostalgia for something I can hardly remember or perhaps never experienced. I feel like I don't belong here, and I want to go somewhere where I do... home -- wherever that even is anymore.

Locked in a sky so blue

Is a land made for me and you

And we're going there, but until the dream comes true

There's a secret place

So full of love and grace

When the world spins and breaks apart

I'm going to the other heaven of my heart...

I've been realising lately that the theme of a lot of my work (not just choreography) is the theme of escape. Not extreme, altered-reality escape -- not detaching oneself from one's emotions; more like escaping into a better reality. I spent so much time in my head because that was where my better worlds were -- the worlds in my head that I unlocked and sculpted with my fingers on the keyboard and my feet on a creaking wood floor. Maybe this song best describes what I've been doing with my artistic output all along. The themes were about escaping because that's what I have always wanted, more than anything -- to be able to reach the goodness that exists only just beyond the curtain of the physical, time-bound world. I can feel it, I sometimes see glimpses of it, but it can't come here, and, until my time comes, I can't go there either. I guess this is why songs like Terry Scott Taylor's Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (among others) resonate with me SO strongly -- at least there is one other person on the planet who sees it too. It's not just me.

And escape is not just the theme of my work, it's often the reason I create. I can go forward to heaven, or back to times I had with people who I will never see again until I can move forward to heaven -- and in the past few years, creating art has often done both at the same time. Choreographing this song specifically takes me back to the time when I still had viable dreams of choreographing and performing, and the friendship of people like M and Brittney. If I could lock myself in any year forever, it would be 2012. There was so much potential and hope in my life then. Now I'm just old and washed up. Doing this piece has really made me realise just how critical M's very existence was to my creative process. There's a duet section in this piece, and I still see her beside me in my mind's eye, doing the beats and turns as I write them down -- her endless energy and bright dramatic eyes. She wanted to escape too, and she was lucky enough to get it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I've already choreographed a piece in her memory, but I think this one is in her memory too. No doubt everything I choreograph from now on will be.

I'm about a third of the way through the song now. It's a light, airy allegro piece, very ethereal, lots of arms and heads and a few floating turns... a lot like the music itself, energetic yet dream-like. I am LOVING choreographing the duet part (I still have a little bit of it to go), especially making them intertwine with each other and with White Heart's glorious harmonies. I can't put into words how much I wish M could dance this with me for real. I wish the curtain of time didn't seperate us.

There I go, trying to escape again.

National Choreography Month, Day 10

For the first time in probably about five years, I was NOT dying of a severe lung infection in December/January (thanks, masks!), which means I've actually been able to properly do National Choreography Month this year.

I've almost done my first piece -- Queen's 'Who Wants To Live Forever.' It's probably the first widely recognisable band I've ever choreographed to in almost nine years of officially choreographing.

I was introduced to this song by someone I knew from college during my final year. We managed to be in three different shows together and as such spent many hours carpooling and sharing music (something we were both extremely passionate about), and one day Queen came up. I was familiar with Bohemian Rhapsody, of course (and if I never hear that song again in my entire life it will be too soon), and We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions because hockey, but neither of those cuts inspired me to delve deeply into their work.

While I picked up Queen songs that I love and play much more than this one from these carpool conversations, this one caught my melancholy mind's attention.

At that time in my life, M's death was extremely fresh, having only happened some four months earlier. Her death sent me into an odd but extremely intense nostalgic state wherein in the nostalgia is so strong it's physically painful and since I can't go back to the places and events and people I'm nostalgic for, I often feel like I don't want to be in this world anymore. I'm tired of longing for a time that can never be again, and every second of existing under that vicious longing feels like a personal attack -- like I'm being slapped in the face with all I've loved and lost. This state of extreme nostalgia continues to this day (if anything, it's intensified in the past few months). This song captured it perfectly... who wants to live forever? For sure not me. It's too painful to live that long under the weight of memories that will only ever be memories.

This is only the third not-tap dance I've choreographed since before M's death two and a half years ago (and one of those was literally the week she died). I haven't taken any ballet classes since I graduated college in April 2019. I had already begun to accept that I might never dance ballet again. I was just too beat down and too burnt out, and I felt I could never enjoy ballet again, so I focused on tap. But lately I've been feeling this pull back to ballet.

This piece was VERY different from what I usually choreograph. It was extremely slow, with a heavy focus on arms and lines (and a good bit of emphasis on character/mood). My usual work is at breakneck speed and I'm lucky if I choreograph five arms for an entire piece. It was such a departure, but at a time when I am still feeling such heavy nostalgia, the song fit and I think so did all the port de bras and lines -- this is a pensive song of reflection and melancholy, not dazzle and fun or even anger and sass. Slow movements, like that of an old man, or one who knows she is not long for this world, fit the yearning and 'so be it' mood of the song. It's a rather cathartic piece to dance.

That being said, there is this one section of allegro...

My husband and I have now been together for a year and a half (total). In all that time, that relationship has never inspired me to create anything artistic. It sounds bad, but there it is. Until this song -- the lyrics 'Touch my tears with your lips / Touch my world with your fingertips / And we will have forever / And we can love forever...'

My husband and I will not live forever, and that is perhaps a mercy for us both. But the time we have together transcends time.

I haven't officially picked a second piece for the contest; all I know is I want it to be a LOT more upbeat (read: less slow/boring) than this one. While I appreciate the beauty and the lines I've created here and I'm fairly certain this will work really well on stage, I'm tired of having slow songs stuck in my head.

Music

If you've been around here long enough, you may remember the music-collector days, circa 2010-2013. However, five years of college and six of unemployment put a real damper on the whole 'buying obscure music from out-of-country' thing.

Now, for the first time in a very long time, I have both a relatively stable job and am not paying tens of thousands of dollars every couple months in tuition fees. You have no idea the financial freedom I have. I am working minimum wage, but I have more 'disposable income' now than I have EVER had in my entire life. I'm still not well-off by most people's standards, but I feel like I'm living a life of luxury. I can buy cheap muffins regularly now instead of only buying them on special occasions. There is a massive weight off my shoulders that I have not felt since before I left for college. Lecrae's sentiment that 'being broke made me rich' is spot-on.

Anyway, all this to say that now that I actually have a couple extra pennies to spare at the end of the month, I took advantage of a few Boxing week sales from a couple of music dealers who specialise in my obscure genre of choice. One such dealer was Girder Music, and one such deal I took advantage of was the Halo/Scott Springer remastered 4-CD pack. I've had my eye on both Halo albums (particularly Heaven Calling) for years now -- since before college, but there was always an album I wanted more... then, of course, there was that college-induced financial drought.

I didn't realise at the time I bought that CD pack that the purchase included full downloads of all four albums, so even though the CDs only shipped today, I get to listen to them at my leisure, starting now.

Due to all the aformentioned circumstances, I haven't been able to buy and enjoy any of these really rare albums for a long time now. And just sitting and listening to these included downloads from this obscure early-'90s band that nobody's ever heard of was such a powerful experience that it made me tear up.

This was the music of a time in my life when anything was possible, my mental health was at an all-time high, I was surrounded by talented, creative, fiery people (who were not yet dead), and my creativity was at its absolute zenith. Even the mere act of sitting and listening to music without thinking about how I should be working on an assignment instead was almost foreign to me. For just a few moments, I've been able to grasp hold of a thin thread of what my life used to be and relish that safe, secure, on-top-of-the-world feeling that I used to have without even realising it.

Hopefully I can do a more in-depth review of the albums once they arrive, but until then I just wanted to chronicle how much I loved simply listening to the music of my younger years after such a long drought.