(Bonus points if you get both halves of that reference.)
I’m one of the maniacs who actually subscribes to YouTube Premium, and it’s primarily due to the fact that it comes bundled with their music service. I am an absolute music junkie; and I’m not just saying that. Without a huge library of music I just wouldn’t be functional at all. I still have a huge collection of mp3s from before streaming became so easy to subscribe to. Explaining why is going to take some doing.
So, when I was a kid, I was unrelentingly cheery. I always tried to be happy, even when life wasn’t cooperating. And when it really didn’t cooperate, I had a bad time of it. But then I met someone who kind of had a taste for the melancholy, and I began to get an appreciation for the lows as well as the highs. I grew to appreciate sadness as well as joy, and to this day feel that one gives context to the other.
So I live my life swinging between the ups and downs, and it’s a vital part of what keeps me moving. To be clear, I’m not suggesting anything to the degree of manic depression; at my best I’m still grounded, and at my worst it’s a wistful appreciation of what I’ve lost. But I’m sure a psychologist would assign it a really dreary term like “emotional dysregulation” or something along those lines. The upshot of it is, if I don’t have a reason to both get choked up and laugh hysterically at some point in a 24-hour period, I consider it a bad day.
And the primary way I get that is through media. I watch sad movies and shows, and I watch stand-up comedy and thrilling adventures. I love sad songs that remind me of absent friends and lost loves, and I love kickass anthems that get my blood pumping. I read wistful stories of love and loss, and I read epic tales of heroism.
But the music is probably the biggest one. I build borderline-schizophrenic playlists full of upper and downer music, and I let the algorithm decide which way things go. And weirdly, I usually get what I want. I can’t count how many times the playlist delivers with what seems to be intent.
I’m sure part of it is selective perception—I’m not going to notice overmuch when meaningless songs roll through my head—but there are hundreds of songs on my playlists, and I tend to get the songs that remind me of the people I love or that I have strong emotional connections with on a semi-regular basis. (It’s almost like I’ve got a spiritual DJ somewhere invested in my emotional well-being.)
The other aspect of this is that I find joy in very simple things. A random encounter with wildlife, a beautiful sunset, or watching thunderclouds build towards an afternoon squall all fill me with a enormous sense of well-being. So when I say “downs” I don’t mean a bleak depression. I just find beauty in sadness and loss and wouldn’t want to go without that.
I figure if they ever put me on antidepressants, I wouldn’t last a month. I got kind of a sample of it not too long ago; I take ashwagandha to sleep and relax. During my freelancing years, I found out the hard way that absent social and diurnal cues I gravitate to a 34-hour day, and getting back to a normal-human schedule took some work. Ashwagandha is great for relaxation, but it has a downside. In large doses, it can cause anhedonia in some folks. It cuts off the highs and lows, like you’re recording an orchestra and compressing it down to a 128-bit .mp3 file.
A while ago, I was reminiscing with my friends about the past and feeling pretty melancholy about things, and I went to take my usual nightly dose without noticing that I’d inadvertently bought a much more potent variety of the stuff. I ended up being awake, groggy, and just fried all weekend, and absolutely suffering from the worst anhedonia. It was kind of terrifying, but I eventually got it all out of my system and buried myself in sad songs and hilarious media until I could focus again.
So—that’s me. I love sadness, and I love happiness. I have to have both in order to function, and it’s the swings that make life worth living for me. So, when I wax in a melancholy direction on this site, don’t worry. It’s just me working at keeping the lights on in my soul.