Shuffle.

Haven’t had a free-style write in a while so I’m going for it.

MAN, I’m tired. Wired tired. I know I should go to bed and I’ve got a thousand things I need to do before then, but I’m not gonna do those either. One thing at a time, right?

I ate dinner down the street at Fishbones tonight and a bunch of musicians set up their amps and instruments across the intersection and started jamming. We were on the patio, and I wasn’t sure about it at first, but once the guitars started humming and the bass started groovin’, it was amazing. They had an ambient sound to their music which blended nicely into the orange-blue dusk lighting. I’m not usually into straight-up jammage, but they were doing it RIGHT, and it cooled the hot air down a lil for us all.

Ahhh, music. I’ve always appreciated it. You know this. I know this. But I’ve really been trying to ABSORB it lately. Life is in a stalemate with time right now, but it’s on the starting block of a sprint, just waiting for the gun. Oh, and it’s about to FLY.

Freakin’ grad school. Yeah, that’s the race for now, and as you know, we’re always racing SOMETHING.

But the MUSIC helps get me THROUGH it. I have a 30-minute commute each way everyday, and putting my iPod on shuffle takes me through everything from slow and peaceful melodies to fast-paced songs I like to run to. Each one is a button-push away from getting passed to the next one, depending on my mood (and how much coffee I’ve had).

Putting my iPod on shuffle is nice because I never know what song will come up. I’ve got music on there I forget about, music I listen to over and over, and music that takes me BACK to different moments in my life.

That last subject is something I am all ABOUT, and something I truly believe in. I’ve talked about it before, and I’ll talk about it again, but I KNOW that everyone has songs that take them to specific points of their lives. This is something I wanna write blurbs about anytime one of these songs comes up for me, and I encourage you to do the same. We can see if any similar songs come up and swap stories.

Pass it on, because I guarantee everyone’s been there at some point.

And if you wanna do it right, put it on SHUFFLE. Life’s a shuffle anyway, right? Yeah, we go to work and school and get into routines, but every day is different. Don’t get caught up in the redundant, but look at what you’re LIVING. Make it fun and make it count.

D.