Down with 2009!

I've been reminiscing a lot today, and as I do so I can't stop thinking about how grateful I am for my family and friends. In a lot of ways this has been a really challenging year for me. I've lost a lot of people that have been incredibly important in shaping the person I've become, and without the friends and family I still have around I don't think I would have made it to this holiday season with the sense of emotional stability I have today. That said, I've also grown a lot on my own and I'm really thankful I've had the chance to do that, even if most of that growth was caused by pain. Hopefully it's laid a good foundation for the coming years.

As I reminisce I remember all of the music that was important to me in 2009. This is my song of the year:

(P.S. How amazing is that freeze frame?!)

Songbird

"Songbird" by Fleetwood Mac is my absolute theme song right now, especially after I did a little research and found this quote from Christine McVie, who wrote the song: ["Songbird" is] "about nobody and everybody... In retrospect, it's like an anthem... A little prayer of sorts."

Purpose

I try to find beauty in every day but sometimes I forget, or I get caught up in the negative things surrounding me. This blog is intended to be documentation and, perhaps, a forum for random inspiration.

With that said, here is my first post. I don't normally enjoy rhyming poetry but this poem has always made me smile.

Ode

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth.
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.