My Social Media-less Life

It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but today I had the opportunity to just listen to music and color. In hindsight, not having anything “fun” to do on my phone definitely helped.

I don’t remember what precipitated it, but I thought of a song from Hawk Nelson’s first album, Letters To The President.

And then I had memories of times in my life when this album was important. How the songs shaped me and the music became the style of music I still lean toward even today. And I had thoughts of people that I used to think of all the time, but now only think of when I hear songs like “Letters To The President”, when my brother and I did the entire song a cappella while jumping on a trampoline just to prove that we could while those people watched us and listened in awe.

And then I realized that Hawk Nelson’s music shaped my teens AND my 20s in a way I didn’t realize. I can think of at least one song (if not the whole album) from all of Hawk Nelson’s library from 2004 through 2015 that somehow helped me through the good times and definitely through some bad times.

There’s one song from their album Smile, It’s The End Of The World that I haven’t been able to listen to without crying since my dad died… and it makes sense since the song was written about a friend that committed suicide.

The song “Zero” has a really impactful music video and when the song was more relevant, my brother and I were into music videos and certainly knew this one well. So when my dad died, this was a song I was only able to listen to one time and realized I will cry every time I hear it, even after almost 9 years. It’s a song I reserve only for my very sad days.

And finally…

The album Crazy Love (Plus The Light Sides) was an album that came out before my 21st birthday and seemed to signal the end of an era: my pre-adult life.

The family had just moved into what was to be our parents’ “forever home”, my brother and I both got new jobs at the same truck stop, and I found a whole community of friends online in a way I had never known before.

Through all of that, there were some questionable decisions made by my brother and me and what were supposed to be our family’s “glory days” turned into some of the hardest times of our lives, but this album and these songs only have good memories associated with them.

My absolute favorite song on the entire album was “Long Ago (Acoustic)”. It had some big feelings to it, and on my 5-minute drive to work those first days at my new job, I made sure to play this song.

In conclusion…

Music is powerful, and although my mom has told me that my entire life, it wasn’t until today that I realized I have any albums or songs that have “big memories” associated with them.

While I’m grateful for all the stages of Hawk Nelson’s music in my life, I’m glad that I only had to live my teens and 20s once. Boy howdy, they were great, but they were heckin hard…