Music – The instant mood changer

At the start of today I wasn’t in as good a mood as I have been up until now. I don’t feel ill but by the same token I don’t feel great, which isn’t good when the weather is a bit poor. It is about 16 degrees here today which doesn’t sound too bad but is is also really overcast and windy which are not a great combination. It means that sitting by the lake to look at the view is a pretty chilly experience even with a jacket on and so I have been resined to coffee shop for a little while (quite a step down from my tree office!). That being said I would still much rather be cold and windy here than sat in an office looking at the same 4 walls for hours so I guess I am kind of winning.

At the moment I am trying to take some time to figure out what I am going to do moving forwards and where I am going to go. The lack of time I had to organise in the UK before leaving meant that I was going to do all my planning for NZ while I was still in Thailand. This didn’t go exactly to plan as I met some amazing people in Thailand and ended up spending time with them being social instead of planning (something I will never regret as they are all amazing people). That being said it has left me with a bit of a gap in a plan and now I need to do some thinking to decide what I need to do next and where to go. I am thinking that I will head down to Dunedin and then come up the east cost of the south island and plan my route from there but now I need to decide on some specifics on when to go and where to visit. The funds are holding up quite well due in part to the amazing hospitality of CB and Audrey as an air bed on their living room floor is much cheaper than even the cheapest hostel.

While trying to rack my brains about what to do I was starting to stress myself out a little bit about getting a plan and figuring things out when I turned on my laptop to start getting online. As I sat here in silence staring out of the window I remembered that I had lots of music and mixes saved on my laptop that I could play as I started working away.

As some of you know one of my favourite types of music is Liquid Drum and Bass. Although there are specific tracks that I like the things that I really love are the hour long mixes made by various artists using their own tracks and other peoples. There are maybe 6 or 7 mixes that I really love and listen to over and over again. It may seem quite repetitive but this is the music that helps me focus and concentrate. Unlike listing to a CD of your favourite band etc. where you would get distracted by the lyrics and start singing along liquid Drum and Bass has a more melodic and beat based rhythm to it. It is something that I can listen to for hours without actually thinking about it too much. The music just drowns out the world but at a tempo that picks me up and gets me into the right mood that I need to be at. I have listened so some of these mixes maybe 50 times each over the last few years which, when I say it out loud, seems crazy but it is something I love. The predictability of knowing what is going to happen means that my brain can focus on the task it is doing while still getting driven forwards by the music. Knowing the flow of the tracks also helps me to get an idea for the passage of time as I know how far along I should be by the time I hear a certain track or change in the tempo. For me this is the best thing to listen to when trying to achieve any sort of thinking work on a computer. I don’t expect a lot of you to really get what I mean by that but I also know that some people will be reading this nodding along in agreement (Cunni and Padd especially) who know that the only way to produce some quality work in a short space of time is to stick on the headphones and crank up the music.

The moment the music started I felt my mood instantly shift. The hairs on my arms stood on end and it was if my brain clicked back into alignment. I am now ready to start taking on some challenges and get back on track, whatever those tracks may be.