I’m terrible at intros, which is what I say every time I’m meant to make an intro post. I’ve put off writing my first piece on this shiny new blog because I didn’t feel like I was in the right headspace to get going. Then I decided that maybe I should write it anyway, so I can look back a year from now and say I took steps in the right direction and that I’m now living my best life. So we begin.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Brand New lately. Like a lot of Brand New (this article got me so amped). My head space right now can best be described as “The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me” (which sounds more frightening than it really is). It’s one of my favourite albums, but not a mental space I want to be in for too long. It feels kind of like what I’d imagine Halsey’s “Badlands” feels like in her mind. Dark, spooky, dangerous. Not very conducive to creative thought and positive living…which uh, isn’t so helpful when you have to restart a blog and rebuild everything. And you don’t want to sit down and write anything because you would rather sleep for 18 hours straight. And you never did before. But you do now? And it’s never enough sleep??
I find that sometimes I let moods go on for too long if I get wrapped up in an album. I listened to Lana Del Rey’s “Born To Die” when it was released and barely got out of bed for a month straight in the middle of summer. An entire month was wasted feeling sad because I let Lana keep me there.
And I believe that is where I am going again. But this album is so damn good, I can’t stop listening. And I’m listening in an entirely different way than I ever have before, and I don’t want to deprive myself of that experience because I’m understanding it better, but I feel like my mental health will just deteriorate if I don’t Separate Entirely.
But to be fair to the Devil (and God), I was already in this space before I started listening. That’s the whole reason the album drew me back in and made me turn off “shuffle all” and turn on “repeat album”. I’ve been slowly disconnecting from the things and people I love for months. It’s finally hit a point where I can no longer smile and laugh and go on as if things are ~cool~ when I’m in social settings. I’ve gotten pretty good at it in the last 9 years, but I think I’m burning out and have lost my touch. This may be the point where I have to sink or swim. And since I’m already sinking, I better think fast. (Jesse Lacey, yoU’RE IN MY HEAD)
So it’s time to make changes. I’ll reassess my current situation. What I’m filling my time with, what I’m filling my mind with, what I let myself get unnecessarily anxious about (admittedly, this lays farther outside of my control), where I spend my days…hell, I’ll listen to brand new Brand New. Anything to try and become my best self.
Not 3 weeks ago, I was with half my squad overseas, taking in the sights of places I’d never been before. I completely lost that sense of freedom and adventure within 24 hours of returning home. That’s not right. I saw a billion of my favourite bands in one place at one time with 3 of my best friends, visited Italian islands, went to Disneyland on another continent, and had one of my favourite artists completely jack my entire aesthetic. It was such a wild 2 weeks, I thought I’ve never come down from the high. But I returned home.
I want to live a life that I don’t need a vacation from. I don’t want to always want to escape. And I don’t want to get out of this town. Brand New, stop trying to convince me I want to get out of this town. Sometimes, you get out of this town and realize it wasn’t the town you were trying to escape at all; it was yourself.
And so we make a change.
