Music Sooths

I've been listening to a lot of music lately.  I love music and it's always been a huge part of my life.  I was dancing shortly after I learned to walk, so from an early age I was exposed to music in a way that not everyone is.  I learned to play the flute (not for me), the drums (loved 'em, hated the people I had to deal with to play), and the piano (my favorite).  I sang in the choir for a while before realizing that everyone would be better off it I spent my time doing something else.  I have a special talent for sight reading music.  I can read music and play it on the piano without too much trouble.  It may take me a while to get up to speed, but the first time I'd run through the piece wasn't as bad as it could have been.

With things feeling like they're a bit unstable at the moment, my poor i.Pod has been getting a serious work out.  I've been listening to all sort of music lately.  I've been working on branching out from my normal genre and seeing what else is out there.  I've grown to enjoy other genres lately and I've enjoyed getting to know other kinds of music.

I've become a huge L.ady G.aga.  I've been listening to her music a lot lately.  The melodies are catchy and I love some of the lyrics.  I think that some of her songs have a fantastic message and I listen to my favorites when I'm feeling particularly blue.

I've also been listening to a lot of music that's on my i.Pod from when I was younger.  I have "middle school" music on my i.Pod and I've been taking a trip down memory lane a lot lately.  It's funny because back then those songs were everything to me.  Now while they still bring a smile to my face, I don't feel compelled to play them over and over again like I did back then.

What's on your playlist these days?

Love this Video - "Beautiful"

This comes from the new show SM.ASH, which I will not be watching.  But I will be keeping my eyes out on YouTube because I think that a lot of good music will come out of this show...  Like this song:

Things To Look Forward To

While 2011 was an interesting year, 2012 is right around the corner and I'm so looking forward to it!  2012 is going to be a fantastic year for me, I can just tell!

For starters, I have some amazing concerts coming up.  I'm going to see Blake Shelton with my sister and cousins in a few months.  I have a mini-crush (ok, maybe not so mini) and I can't wait to see him in person.  I love his music and I can't wait to see him sing "Honeybee" in person.  In the spring, I'm going with one of my best friends to see Lady Antebellum (for the third time!) and Darius Rucker (who is my second favorite singer these days).  We're going to celebrate my friend's birthday and her graduation.  We both love country music and those artists, so I can't wait to enjoy a fun concert with her!

My two closest friends will be returning to the US after living in Africa.  Both ladies will be home around the summertime.  I can't wait to have them home!  I hate hearing stories about civil unrest and running to the computer to see how far away it is from both of them.  And one friend in particular has gotten sick over there a few times and that's a really scary thing.  So I can't wait until they both come home!  I'm so happy that they are having a great time and learning great things, but coming home is fun too.

It's time for me to get my own place.  I'm going to start looking for an apartment in the spring.  I'll have been home for a year and paid off a good portion of my loans.  So I think it's time for me to think about moving out on my own to start my own life.  I love my parents.  They are awesome.  Sure, the Grinch has been a major pain in my ass the last few months, but he's my dad so I'll always love him.  He means well most of the time.  And my mom is amazing.  She's a saint.  And my sister and I are starting to get along better.  But never the less, I need to start my own life and learn to take care of myself.  So I'll be moving on, while staying close enough to home that I can still visit whenever I want.

The Adoptee Rights Convention is going to be in Chicago in 2012.  I'm determined to be in attendance!  Unfortunately San Antonio didn't work out.  But Chicago is much more manageable and because I know about it a long time in advance, I've already starting putting money aside for it.  I can't wait to meet some of the wonderful people I've met online in person and to move from just being an e-activist to working towards equal rights for adoptees in person.

There's got to be a lot of stuff that I'm missing, but these are the big things that jump out at me.  You never know what the year will bring!  So here's to a fantastic and hopeful 2012!

I Love The Internet

The Internet lets me share things
like this

What would be do with the Internet?  Seriously!  A random statement, I know, but I swear I have a point here.  Music has always been a huge part of my life.  It's something that has gotten me through a lot, and will help me get through the challenges that I've been facing lately.  When I say music has been a huge part of my life, I should clarify.  I've been dancing since I was two.  At the time of writing this post, I'm twenty-four... (wow, just got distracted by the fact I'm an adult!).  I've been dancing for twenty-two years.  That's almost 92% of my life.  If I was still in school, I'd know that's an A-, a pretty big deal.  Without music, I couldn't dance (and trip over my own feet).  So it's been super important.

Before the Internet, I would listen to tapes and CDs.  My parents were really into tapes, so I used to have a tape player.  Then when CD players became popular, I asked for CDs but my parents didn't really trust them.  And they were expensive!  So most of the time, I was limited to radio.  Don't get me wrong.  I love the radio.  It's fantastic.  I have my favorite stations.  But sometimes you just want to hear that ONE song that you know is going to turn your day around.  Before I had nothing.

Now, I have YouTube!  I want to hear Brown Eyed Girl and I don't have my iPod, I just plug it into YouTube and I can hear several different versions (which I don't really care about because we all know the original is the best).  And I'm instantly in a good mood.

But sometimes I'm not in the mood to just hear a specific song.  And while I now have all my music on my magical cell phone, sometimes I just want to hear something different.  So I recently jumped on the Pandora Radio bandwagon.  I went there.  It's amazing!  I love how it seems to read my mind and send me songs that I've never heard before but LOVE all while mixing in some old favorites and current hits.  Plus I'm one of those weird people who use too much data for the smaller data plan but comes no where close to the limit of data I pay for.  So I love listening to my Pandora Radio to up my data out of principle.  Yeah, I'm odd like that.

I have a few other Internet loves.  I recently was invited to Pinterest and I'm obsessed!  I'm totally loving it and it's a new distraction when I don't have anything going on and need to relax.  I have a board that's filled with beach pictures, and it's my new relaxing board for when I need to take a chill pill.  I love it!  I'm also actually liking the new Twitter (didn't think I would at first), and I switched to Timeline on Facebook the minute I could so I'm not phased by it.

And my number one reason to be thankful for the Internet?  My Internet peeps!  Between blogging, my support forum, my new friends on Facebook, and all that other goodness, I've found a way to connect to so many people who are going through similar things.  There's nothing sweeter...

Learning to Relax Again

I've tried this before and failed miserably, but I'm deciding that I'm going to be happy from here on out.  I'm going to work harder at getting to a better place than I'm at right now.  I'm determined to do it.  I can't keep living like this, and I'm going to deal with it and move on.  So I'm going to try to stay positive, and make some changes in my life to reduce my stress.  I've been browsing around on the web looking for tips and I figured I'd share some of the things I've been doing in my life in an effort to feel better.

Deep Breathing
Megan over at Earth Stains posted this gem a few months back.  I've been practicing and oh boy does it help a lot!  This method of deep breathing is something that I can do anywhere.  When I feel particularly stressed, I start a cycle of this at my desk.  I close all the windows on my computer (leaving only the relaxing background), relax my muscles, focus my eyes on a blank wall in my cube (if I'm not at my desk I close my eyes), and focus on my breathing as I recite the numbers in my head.  I block everything else out other than my breathing to the count.  It's so soothing and it helps me to calm down.  I've learned that deep breathing is a great way to relax and to relieve anxiety.  I highly recommend you check it out.

Organized To-Do List
I've been learning how to better organize my to-do list.  I wish I still had all the wonderful links but I have yet to organize enough to keep track of them!  Basically, it's helpful to keep things written down.  It lessens my anxiety and gives me a place to look when I need to figure out what I should be doing.  I tend to let things stack up and then I worry about them.  By making a to-do list, I'm able to stop worrying about forgetting to do something.  Everything I need is on my list you see...  But a to-do list isn't good enough to cut it for me.  It has to be organized.  Some tips include making things specific (rather than writing "Do Christmas Shopping" I wrote "Go to CVS Saturday to purchase doll for Katie"), organize them by priority (things with higher priority go near the top so I don't loose them in the list), keep separate lists for short term vs long term (certain items are long term goals and I don't want them cluttering up my list everyday), and make sure items move on the list (the point of the list is to get things done; therefore I expect myself to finish at least three things per day and to add new ones as they come up).  Microsoft OneNote has really helped me to work on this goal and it's helped me to be more successful and productive lately.  It's also decreased my anxiety level because I keep a separate list of everything I've accomplished in the past week so I can feel proud of my accomplishments and feel like the list isn't a mountain to climb over.

Headphones
My desk at work isn't in the most ideal place.  It's across from the office printer.  That's right folks.  Every time someone in our department of about seventy-five people prints something, I sit there and listen to the printer.  It's annoying.  And then they walk over to get their printed paper.  And sometimes they bring a friend.  And they talk.  It's maddening.  So I brought my noise reducing headphones to work and put all my music on my phone.  And so the music helped.  But I found that I got distracted by it sometimes.  And I don't always have relaxing music on my phone.  Then I realized that I have a white noise app on my phone that has the sounds of waves crashing on the beach!  The beach is my happy place, and where I feel most relaxed.  Now I listen to the ocean while I'm at work.  I still hear the printer in the background, but the sounds in my headphones help to relieve some of the stress and keep me focused.

Screen Brightness
I lowered the brightness of all my computer screens (yes, I have more than one).  I don't need to be looking at a glaring screen all day if I can read it fine without the bright lights.  The bright light of the screen isn't the greatest for your eyes and it was starting to give me headaches.

Walks
My breaks are now dedicated to walking around the office.  The act of walking around and getting out that pent up energy has started to really help me.  Can I really get in good exercise from walking around work?  Well my building is sort of a half of a mile long from end to end.  And I happen to work on one end.  While I don't have time to walk the mile down and back on a short break, I have plenty of room to walk around and to change some scenery.

Reading
Reading is another stress reducer that I've given another try.  Rather than watching TV before bed, I've started to read.  I've had problems with this before (I tend to get caught up in a good book and can't put it down, thus not sleeping when I should be) but now I'm trying really hard just to stick to two chapters a night (depending on a book).  I heard on the radio that reading is the best stress reliever, and that it's better than watching TV.  I just finished one of my books and I really need to get going on another one.

Well there you have it, some tips and tricks I've been following to help reduce my anixety and to lead a less stressful life!

Concerts

I went to see Taylor Swift last night with my cousin. I've been waiting forever for this concert to hurry up and get here and she didn't disappoint. I don't know what was more fun, the concert or people watching.

I was thinking about how much better this concert was for me because it took place after reunion. Sound weird? Well, there were 52,000 people there last night at this concert. That's a lot of people. Before reunion, I would have looked out into that sea of faces and wondered if I was related to any of them. I would have wondered if I had siblings out in the crowd, or if my parents were there. I knew they weren't last night and to be honest, it was a relief. I was thrilled that I was able to relax and enjoy my concert. There's a decent chance I could have had cousins there, but I had cousins from my adoptive family there (I went with my adoptive cousins after all) so that wouldn't bother me.

Here's a question for all my readers. What's the best concert you've evr been to and why?

Trigger - Music

I love music. Who doesn’t? Is there really anyone out there who doesn’t like music? When I first got my non-identifying information, I laughed so hard when I read that SinginInTheRain listed “music” as an interest. Who isn’t interested in music?  I really learned a lot about him from that statement...

It’s funny how music can be a huge trigger for me. I can be driving and “Dirty Little Secret” comes on the radio and just like that I’m angry, upset, and close to tears. Doesn’t matter who’s in the car with me, I want to punch something.  I actually have to watch my iPod shuffle now because this has happened at some bad moments.  Why not just take it off my iPod?  Because I can't.  It's a good song and it reminds me to be truthful. 

Some love songs tell of abandonment, and while it’s not what was intended, all I can think about is how I was abandoned not once, but twice by NeverTooLate.  Break up songs are the worse.  Breaking up sucks, but I argue that it’s even worse when the dumping is being done by the women who gave birth to you, the only person who can ever hold that position in your life.  I hate hearing songs like these.  They make me feel like I'm going to burst out in tears.  On a side note, when my friends go through hard break ups they like to tell me that because I'm in a good relationship I don't know what they are going through.  I don't know 100% what they are feeling, but I do know what it feels like to be hurt badly by someone who is supposed to love you.  These songs remind me of that.

Some songs have helped pull me out of a few funks I’ve been in.  Mostly these songs deal with standing up for yourself and what you believe in.  They remind me that I have to be true to myself, even if others are telling me that I don’t have the right.  It’s funny how I can even identify with music written about civil rights. I don’t have the right to my original birth certificate without a court order, something I will probably never get, something that most people take for granted.

Then there are songs that I've heard a million times before and they come on the radio and I hear the lyrics totally differently.  I hear different things in the song that I never heard before.  Now that I'm coming out of the fog and I'm in reunion, I hear different things that I never heard before.  I take different messages from these songs.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to hearing these songs the way I originally heard them.  Other times I'm glad for my new sense of clarity.

NeverTooLate and I listen to the same kind of music. SinginInTheRain and I differ very much. Our iPods probably have very few songs in common. However, music is important to me and that is something that we have in common, with each other and billions of other people out there too!

Brown Eyed Girl

One of my favorite songs is “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison.  I have loved this song forever.  There are a few reasons.  First, when I was younger, we went on a giant family ski trip.  I think we had something like 30 people jammed into six hotel rooms.  One night we all got together and played music my uncle had brought.  Sure enough, my song came on.  As a brown eyed girl, it always felt like MY song.  I have a few aunts who have brown eyes (they are a minority on my mom’s side) and we all danced around and sung the song to our hearts content.  In that moment, I forgot about all the other stuff and just enjoyed being with my family.  In that moment I fit in and my brown eyes were celebrated.

As I got older and learned about genes, I learned that one of my parents had to have brown eyes.  It would have been genetically impossible for me to have them if both parents had blue eyes.  So that song was my connection to them.  If I had brown eyes, there was a pretty good shot that NeverTooLate had them too.  She was a “Brown Eyed Girl” too.  I always imagined that if she had kept me, we’d dance around singing this song together, celebrating our brown eyes.  I could never do that with my mom.  It was always about me, not about us.  We were different in that way too.

I was love when my shuffle sends me songs that I need to hear.  Sometimes I think someone is up there planning my shuffle playlist.  Oh, and I was so pissed at Prom when they played an edited version.  We all know they were making love in the green grass.  Get over it.