This morning, as I prepared to take my post-workout shower, my morning playlist cycled over to a song that’s been on there for a while. I added “Wherever We Are Now” (from the game “Cassette Beasts” and the EP Same Old Story (from “Cassette Beasts” Original Soundtrack) to my daily preparation playlist this summer, during July, when I finally had the time to make some decent progress in the game. I then promptly stopped playing it on the weekends where I could be bothered to turn my PC on because I developed a crippling addiction to Baldur’s Gate 3, which took over my life for quite a while. Still, I’ve really enjoyed the soundtrack for the game and plan to get back to it eventually, if only because I’m limiting myself to songs from the soundtrack that I’ve already heard in-game and I really want to listen to the rest of it.

The whole game strikes a tone that has really resonated with me this year, as so much in my life has changed and has refused to change. As I’ve seen relationships wither due to lack of care, as I’ve cut some loose for my own well-being, and as I’ve been cut loose (probably for the other person’s well-being, but that’s just conjecture on my part), it has all gotten wrapped up in this song and a few others like it. This playlist, that I play as I make my coffee, take my fiber supplement, brush my teeth, take my shower, make my lunch, get dressed for work, take care of my bird, and shuffle my way out my door every morning, is full of songs like this. Songs that are about a specific feeling that has resonated strongly with me in a way that is condusive to morning reflections when I’m too groggy or workout-addled to focus on lyrics and need to let my mind chew on something so I can focus on getting myself ready free of distractions or mental digressions.

This playlist, that I’ve called “zeitgeist,” is something I slowly maintain as time passes and my general mood changes. The term is one I first encountered in high school, while studying German, and that I later encountered in college in a philosophy course I took about existentialism. In high school, I learned that it basically meant “the spirit of the time,” meaning that it could be used to reference the feel of a specific moment in time, be that time a chunk of the past, a speculative moment of the future, or the a reflection of the present. In college, I learned more about its specific philosophical meanings, but most of that reinforced the idea that the general meaning of the term is “the spirit of a time” and the philosophical specifics did not stick with me beyond that. As a result, this playlist is supposed to be a reflection of my current moment in time, a way to build up emotional bullwarks against the random fluctuations of life and my penchant for getting lost in “what ifs” and “what could bes.” Unfortunately, after this year, that playlist is almost entirely full of “what ifs” and “what could bes” rather than songs that reflect the moment I’m trying to create for myself. Now, with few exceptions, most of these songs stir pensive reflections of my past, desires for the future, and a general dissatisfaction with my present life.

As much as I might like to brush it all aside and create something more upbeat for myself, something that fires me up and pushes me forward, I don’t think I could handle that. I am having a difficult time keeping myself moving forward as it is and the only thing that has allowed me to keep going has been everything I’ve learned about pacing myself and about setting attainable goals. If I started pushing myself, like I did in November, I will absolutely burn myself out worse than ever. Sure, I’m not in great shape right now, but I can still get myself out of bed every morning and take a stab at each day as it passes. Barely, sometimes, but I haven’t skipped one yet.

So, sure, I might have heard the refrain from Wherever We Are Now–“Wherever we are now/Slow floating under the stars now/It’s okay to be uncertain, cause I’m certain it’s fine/To be floating here for a while/With you, wherever we are now” (lyrics provided by the Cassette Beasts wiki)–and gotten lost in bittersweet memories of my first relationship after I graduated from college. Sure, I might have thought about the times when I still wished that I might someday wind up back alongside people from my past, that things that had broken might yet be made whole, and that every problem was fixable given enough time and determination. Sure. But this song isn’t just about those things. Most of the songs on my “zeitgeist” playlist can be read like this, as bittersweet mementos of a past I can’t reclaim and don’t even really want to return to because of how unhealthy those times were for me, but there’s another layer here that is usually what turns those sad moments into the soft, gentle encouragement I need these days.

I don’t talk about it much, but I talk to myself. My thoughts in my head are mostly a conversation back and force between me and myself. I rarely verbalize this since I don’t really feel a need to express this process unless I’m working with or being observed by other people (like how I used to keep up a pretty constant mutter while I was streaming last spring, frequently not realizing what I was saying until I’d stopped and gone back to remember it), but almost all of my thoughts are framed as a dialogue between myself and myself. There aren’t two versions of me in my head, to be clear. I do not experience myself or life as a plurality. I just have conversations with myself. I make puns to myself. When I hum, I’m humming to myself. If I sing something, I’m singing to myself. Which is where this playlist comes in. All of the songs on it are ones that I sing to myself. That mean something when they’re directed from Me, to Me.

This specific aspect of my internal framing is probably a side-effect of the therapy I’ve been doing over the last half a decade. I’ve been working slowly (when I’ve got the emotional capacity) through all of my trauma using a therapy called EMDR which is great for processing past traumas in a way that allows you to resolve the sort of frozen state of your past self in your much safer present. As a result, I’ve gotten very used to dealing with different, usually past versions of myself as I’ve listened to the me from the past and done what I could to address the needs, desires, and pain of the person I used to be who had no one to support them. I got so used to seeing myself as someone I could talk to, that I could support, that it’s become my default interpretation for most music I encounter. When I indentify with what a song is saying, when the words of a singer resonate with me but are directed at someone else, I usually wind up seeing it as a something I’m singing to myself.

For example, when I hear it, the song “Wherever We Are Now” isn’t about two people who have become close and are content to work their way through the world together no matter where that takes them since they will always have each other. It’s about me doing my best with whatever comes up in my life because, if nothing else, I will always have myself. No matter how much my life might change, no matter how much the world might shift around me, I will always be able to rely on myself. It’s a cold comfort at times, which is usually where the bittersweet remembrances work their way in, but it’s a fairly radical idea for me considering I spent the majority of my life believing that I was here just to be useful for other people. For other people to rely on since all that mattered was what I could do for other people. It’s a huge deal that now my first thought, when I hear a song like this, is what I could do, the person I could be, for myself.

I think that, eventually, I will dig myself out of this hole. Therapy is going better than ever. My life might be difficult, but it’s not bad. All of my work is slowly but surely paying off. I am making progress on my goals that might sometimes be so small it is only visible in aggregate, but there’s nothing I’m better at than putting my head down and getting to work. I might need to remind myself that this all takes time and I should just focus on moving forward rather than trying to perceive the progress I’m making, but I’m getting there. Plus, it’s okay to be sad sometimes. Or a lot of the time. I’ve got a lot to be sad about and grief is part of a healthy emotional life. It will lessen in time, joy will be more frequent, and I won’t need to always worry about whether or not my music choices are going to just make me sad. Or, you know, about finding a way to feel sad about music that would normally make me feel happy. The wheel turns and, so long as I keep pushing it, better times will come around again.