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Comment by SapporoChris

3 days ago

The right music at the right time can be transformative.

I remember listening to the theme song for "The Social Network" often when I was frustrated at work about 12 years ago in a different job in a different state in a different life.

Scala & Kolacny Brothers -- Creep

It's a haunting choral cover of the Radiohead song.

  • Glad to know there are other folks that found The Social Network soundtrack as impactful.

    I have listened to Hand Cover Bruise first through university and hundreds of times since, often to calm my nerves before some of the biggest milestones of my life.

    • It not only calmed my nerves but also made me even more determined.

      I realized money can't buy happiness, but it can move you away from unhappiness.

I was working at a dead-end IT job that was eating away at me because the company was a terrible fit, and I couldn't help but wonder if I could put my skills to better use than clearing paper jams and running mail merge reports. But the easy path was to just keep doing the same thing every day.

One day on the way in I was listening to Jonathan Coulton's "A Talk With George" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXk5dXYw728) and it kicked me in the face with:

  Don't live another day unless you make it count
  There's someone else that you're supposed to be
  There's something deep inside of you that still wants out
  And shame on you if you don't set it free

And that was the day I quit.

That being said, I had the same reaction to the link at the bottom of that post; I recognize anything can be transformative to the right person at the right time, but I struggled to identify the message in an instrumental DJ set.

For me that was hearing "Stellardrone - Breath in the light" a decade ago during a very stressful work period.

Now it is my go to, in stressful times, when I need to focus and gather my thoughts.