Life Soundtracks

I am writing now, at 3:13am, cause I know when I get up in the morning and go to work from 2p-2a I will not have a chance, even if I do remember.

I am big on soundtracks.  Not just movie soundtracks, but life soundtracks.  The other day it occurred to me that I really needed to make a "skiing mix" for my mp3, and in the back of my mind I have been thinking of songs to put on it.  That reminded me that when I was in the South, my big thing was my "beach mix" and my "Workout mix".  I love mixes.  I love finding perfect songs and saving them and labeling them and dating them, and then finding them years later. Then you listen to a song and know which song is next, and it takes you back to the exact moment you were in when you last listened to it.  Music is deceivingly powerful like that.  I started burning CDs in 2001, and love looking back to see what songs I liked and what the purpose of the CD was.  I had a CD that I listened to while mopping floors at work during summers in high school.  I have a CD made of songs that my college boyfriend and I made together, complete with "our" song on there twice, Eddie Money's Take Me Home Tonight.  There was a CD I made to listen to while driving to and from clinicals in nursing school.  Whenever I hear Jay-Z's Forever Young I think of my drive to work in the South, complete with Magnolia Blossoms and Maryland Fried Chicken in the air.  The Nelly Furtado CD that played on repeat in the massive bathroom in my sorority in college will always remind me of that time.  Five for Fighting and Guster take me back to high school.  Third Eye Blind takes me back to junior high, and TLC's Waterfalls takes me back to third grade.  I am a sucker for songs and what they can mean to a person.  Delta Goodrem reminds me of my crazy bus ride through the Honduran mountains in 2008.  As far as I am concerned music is another form of memory.  Someday I want to put these all together and make a timeline of my life in music.  All these memories remind me of who I am and what I have been through, and I can't wait to see what mixes are to come.