Letting the sun shine through: finding my theme music

I assumed it would be so easy for me to choose a song that spoke to me as my theme music. I'm that person who has a song that relates to any situation and bursts into song at a moment's notice. But the idea of picking just one song, and in particular a song that I felt spoke about me, was a real challenge. I lamented to Rich that I didn't have a theme song. He voted for Fishbone's Everyday Sunshine, as he says that song makes him thinks of me. In my mind, though, that was more of me from his perspective.

So I started perusing my iTunes library looking for inspiration. I can name all kinds of songs that I think are theme songs for other people, but this is supposed to be about me. And that was really giving me a hard time.

We went out for a million errands this morning and didn't make it back to the house until after 1pm. As we came around the corner, I noticed a neighbor having an Open House and called my mother to see if she wanted to go (what? you don't go to all the Open Houses in your neighborhood just to see what they've done?). As I talked to her on the phone she sounded distressed and told me one of their tenants is moving out in two weeks and there is a bit of drama surrounding it all. The housing market in general is complete crap these days and my parents are concerned it will be hard to find a decent replacement tenant.

She rallied to come down and tour the neighbor's house but ended up sitting in my house for several hours afterward lamenting about their current state of affairs. The whole thing is a bit of a downer. By the time she left, I noticed it was 4:15pm and I still had not chosen, let alone written about, my personal theme music. And honestly, I was having a hard time finding inspiration.

I have always been an optimistic person, sometimes to a fault. When my brother was 11, he was in a bit of a mood and my mother cautioned him to cheer up so he wouldn't ruin everyone else's Christmas. As she said this, I motored past at the tender age of four and declared, "he's not gonna ruin my Christmas." Ever since, our family's subculture has included the colloquialism of not letting someone ruin your Christmas.

I'm also an overly sensitive person, letting other people's problems become my own more than I necessarily need to. This aspect of my personality makes me great at my job and a pretty solid friend to have, but can take its toll on me. I've spent probably the last five years or so actively trying to find some sort of balance between sensitivity and selfishness for my own sanity.

And as I have learned in great detail while working with my medical team for this pregnancy, I'm not really the type of person that most people are used to dealing with. I'm not sure if I come across as too ... something ... for them to be able to handle. Sometimes that's refreshing for folks but I also can imagine that it can take a bit to get used to. I have to remind myself that the rest of the world is a lot more shy and reserved than I am.

As I pondered all of this, I hunted around trying to find a song that fit me fairly well and stumbled upon Ethel Merman's I Got the Sun in the Morning. I have always loved Ethel Merman in that she doesn't sing anything halfway. Browsing through YouTube, though, someone commented that she sang with all the finesse of a truck driver. Ah, to each their own. But no matter how you feel about her singing, you can't help but smile when you hear her sing and possibly even tap your foot along.

Since I limited myself to just one song, this one seemed most fitting. You may not know how to deal with me all the time, but you can't help but smile while I'm doing my thing.

Living Out Loud volume 9: Your theme music

When you imagine that montage of some part of your life, what music is playing? Is there a particular ring tone others assign to you in their phones? When you're playing a sport, going for a long run, about to take on the world, what song is on repeat in your skull and cranked to volume 11? When they carry your coffin what song will be playing? This month's Living Out Loud project is all about your personal theme music. And don't tell me you don't have one. Everyone has one, it just may not play very loud. But there has to be something that plays in your head at key moments in your life.

I've been reading a lot of "birth plans" lately in preparation for our little guy's big arrival and a lot of them talk about what music you might want to have playing while you're in labor. And while I don't think our son needs to burst forth into this world to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, it does give me a lot to think about on how powerful music can be.

So tell us what music we should be humming when we see you walking down the street. Tell us what makes this song (or songs if it's a particularly long street) so special. And strut your stuff.

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each question above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• It's by no means required, but feel free to include a link to the song or music video if possible. It's always helpful for context in case we weren't raised on the same music you were.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org.

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, October 4th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

Go forth and sing it loud and proud!

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video. from LOCKDOWN projects on Vimeo.

Recap of 8th Living Out Loud project: Little treasures

This theme turned out to be harder for me than I thought it would be. Teller (of Penn and Teller fame) has a book about his parents called When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours. The title came from a trip to his father's cellar in search of a flat-head screw amongst all the coffee jars of stuff. While searching for this particular screw, his father proclaimed with a sweeping gesture, "When I'm dead, all this will be yours!"

I think about Teller and his dad a lot when I'm dealing with my parents and all their stuff. So much of it is just worthless junk. But mixed in all of it are some true gems. It's just going to take years to find them all.

You all did a fabulous job of telling us what your personal treasures are, and the results are amazingly diverse!

Candice's What do you treasure? She did a fine job of being able to answer the question of what she would go back for were her home on fire. And after hunting for pictures of myself recently, I have realized the frustration of getting pictures of the person who's always the photographer. So her treasure is even more special for that.

Kim's Treasured Objects with a Purpose Kim has so many things that she has collected over the years, I was curious what she would pick. It amazed me that her treasures are things she uses every day.

Megan's Unadorned I was reading this and Rich looked over and said, "Hunh. She had that ring on when we were dating." I'm not sure if I'm more impressed with what she had to say or her ability to take a picture of her own hand.

Karal's Rock On. Convincing her to write stuff down in a blog will stand as one of my best ideas ever. I found a few rocks of my own this afternoon digging around as well as a 35mm film case full of sand from Los Angeles a friends brought me. Little things like that can mean so much.

Deb's Stuff and Nonsense I think the Christmas ornament is my favorite. Rich has all these treasured ornaments he brought with him to our relationship and I don't really have any. I should work on that.

And my own Treasures have happy memories

I also know that Gina has written an entry but left it at work, so I'll update that once she can post it.

Edit: Gina's entry is here - Living Out Loud #8 - and is a great tribute to both of her parents as well as her in laws. Thanks for sharing!

This month, I choose Karal as our winner as she truly stuck to the spirit of living out loud for this project. I should note, though, that Candice gets an honorable mention for having an item that fits the description of "take from a burning building" worthy.

Karal's prize is a compact flash card for her dSLR camera, to help ensure we see plenty of photography from her in the future. You can never have too many compact flash cards.

As always, I'm grateful for everyone who participated and hope you all enjoyed reading these. I have a few ideas brewing for our next project so stay turned for an update on that within the week!