5 Songs That Have Shaped My Life

Hey y’all!

I’m working from home today after a whirlwind trip for work to Florida. I know what you’re thinking, ‘wow, Florida! How cool?!’ Well, kinda. It was a 24 hour trip, almost literally; my plane landed on Sunday at 7:30pm and wheels up was Monday at 7:50pm. I honestly don’t want to bore everyone with my mundane details of a work trip, so I was trying to figure out what I was going to write about and BAM Instagram happened!

Now, you can probably tell by my use of y’all that I’m a country fan (is that stereotyping? Profiling? Oh well.) Most mornings on my way to work I listen to the Bobby Bones Show. I’ve never really listened to a radio show before but this one is so fun and light-hearted and I really just want to be friends with pretty much all of them. So on Instagram Bobby Bones had a post that showed the 5 songs that shaped his life, and the 5 songs that shaped co-host Amy’s life. What a cool idea! I decided to copy them.

Here are my 5 songs that have shaped my life in no particular order: 

So many wonderful memories come to mind looking at this list and I already know what my next blog post is going to be. Explanations for each, because I'd like this blog to dig a little deeper. 

Stay tuned. 

College Daze

Last night, Vin, my boyfriend, and I had a date night to go see Pitch Perfect 2. We went to the Alamo Drafthouse, which is an amazing cinema, and really enjoyed the movie. It was the perfect blend of the first movie and an original and I got to drink a delicious blackberry pear cider while laughing through the film. But one of the things that stuck with me afterwards was the idea of the Barden Bellas graduating college, this happened to coincide with my undergraduate institution graduating last night.  

Y’all, college was the best time of my life. I would say to-date but I have this sneaky suspicion that things may never top those four years. I went to school 550 miles away from home in North Carolina and while the first semester was rocky the ones that followed are filled with memories of some of the most intense friendships I’ve ever had. During my time there I was able to travel the world and take advantage of amazing opportunities. But some of my most cherished memories are just average days on campus, sitting on an old porch swing with my friends and laughing.

Watching the movie last night and then coming home and seeing pictures of some of my friends graduating just really made me miss those four years. College is many things for many people and I can’t imagine a different experience for me; to think back to my first semester there when the idea of transferring was never far from my mind baffles me now. I’m thankful for the experiences I had, the friends I made and the lessons I learned during my four years in a sleepy North Carolina town. 

Testing the Waters

Hey y’all! 

So, I’m not even sure why I’m starting this blog up. This is probably my eighty-third attempt to blog. My last one was actually a bit more successful but it was so specialized, for lack of a better term, and I felt like I couldn’t cross into the personal every day ramblings of my life because it was meant to be an outlet for dealing with anxiety. I plan on keeping up with the anxiety advocacy page (please check it out, the link is to the right) but I want this to be more than just how I deal with feel anxious about (a lot of) things.

But, I digress. THIS blog is going to just be for my ramblings. I used it back in 2011 to chronicle the six weeks I spent in France and while I had been intending to start up a new one I realized that this would work just as easily. I also had been trying to figure out a name for this thing and when I pulled up the page to this blog it just kind of clicked.

I just graduated with my Masters degree, I’m starting my job full-time on Monday and I’m finally able to step from my academic world into the “real” one. For the first time in 19 years I won’t be a student in the fall, and that’s a different thing for me; not quite scary but different. It’s time for me to just trust my instincts with everything and let go. The boundaries that were part of my life have kinda of faded away; every year was the same, school in the fall until December, then January to May same thing, a few months off and then it starts all over again. But that’s not there anymore. There’s a freedom that I’m not used to and I’m slowly falling in love with that.

This blog is going to be an outlet, it’s going to be a place that I can go to connect with others. Because, honestly, I haven’t really connected with too many people here in Northern Virginia, in fact as far as friends go it’s pretty bleak. But I’m doing what I love, I have a boyfriend that I love, and life is good.

So, let’s see where this takes us.