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Music keeps me from going insane.
Unfortunately, I’ve overthought just about everything there is to overthink and I’m often the victim of my own imagination. Although I’m neither a musician nor a singer, I’d say music means just as much to me as it does to anyone that creates it.
I’ve found myself overthinking if I chose the right answer on an exam after turning it in. I’ve overthought a friend’s advice on how to interact with that girl plenty of times. I’ve found myself overthinking whether I could set a new personal record before squatting or laying on a bench press with my trainer beside me saying, “Don’t overthink, just do it.”
This is where music comes in. It’s my therapy that, without fail, keeps me grounded.
For example, I would listen to Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack the morning of an exam as I walked to the campus library at 5 AM to wake up and focus my thoughts before I crammed. When I’m at the gym, it’s A$AP Ferg or Lil Wayne that pushes me to finish my set instead of dropping my dumbbells mid-workout and driving to Cookout for a milkshake (yes, I forgot my headphones at home once and this happened).
Whether I’m driving alone or with others, artists like Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, Arijit Singh, and Sid Sriram make me want to take a detour and extend my trip just a little bit. More recently, I came across an old track called “My Little Brown Book” by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane that feels like a stroll down Bourbon Street on a summer night while I’m in the kitchen meal prepping for the week on a Sunday.
You get the idea. Music is my escape, and there is a time and place for every genre I listen to. It helps me live in the present when I’m so caught up pondering my near and distant future. Music is so instrumental (get it?) to my way of living that I listen to some form of it every day.
In other words, I could never give music up. I hope confessing my love for music encourages you to ask yourself the same question: what does music mean to you?
Inside My Mind 