Life is never easy. This is not a revolutionary thought. But as young children we often forget that things don’t get easier as we age. Maybe it was just me, but when I was younger I just assumed that once I got to the point where I was accomplishing goals and living dreams that my life would become easy. This couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The truth is that I found myself actively living out one of my dreams and yet I was in one of the darkest mental states I had ever been. The reason is not the point of this particular story so I won’t get into it, but what is important is the bigger story. How I got out of that state, and what helped pull me from those depths.
I had just finished up a five week trip to one of my favorite places on earth, Hawaii, and was set to have yet another epic adventure roadtripping through New Zealand for the next month. For a variety of reasons I was not feeling myself, I was in a dark place and going through some of the most severe depression I’ve felt in my life to this point. Luckily for me, one of my favorite artists, Jeremy Loops, released a new album in the middle of my road trip. Jeremy Loops is a South African musician from Cape Town that I had discovered during my many hours spent watching YouTube videos and he didn’t have much music released at the time. This album, Critical as Water, was only his second album.
For whatever reason, Jeremy Loops’ music was always able to be a mood booster for me. Every time I listened to his first album I couldn’t help but to sing along with all the words that I knew. So when I was driving the backroads of New Zealand I would take every chance I could to put on Critical as Water. It pulled my mind out of the dark corners I would so often find myself in, and help lift me up.
In some small effort to pay tribute for what Jeremy and his music has done for me, I had the outline of Cape Town’s most iconic landmark put onto my wrist.
“A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you, and the sentence is your life.”