THE OFFICIAL PLAYLIST

The official playlist for the blog!

The one I made before the website was even started: the inspiration for the blog, if you will. You can listen to it on shuffle, but I recommend listening to it in the order I placed it since I worked for hours, making it a nice, smooth transition from song to song, vibe to vibe.

I was up for three nights making this playlist; I even cried a little. The act of creating this playlist proved to be a therapeutic experience. It allowed me to let go of the past and move forward from the person I once was, the girl who lived in New York and dreamed of working in the fashion industry and created space for the woman I was becoming; the woman I hoped to become.

On Halloween night of 2022, I finish creating this playlist, a healing moment in itself. The Halloween before was what I now refer to as the "beginning of the end" of my time in the city, of allowing myself to rot under others' perceptions and ideals for who I should be. The Halloween of 2021 was a tragic one, a story that can not be simplified for the sake of this blog post.

This Halloween, though, Halloween 2022, I was alone, dog-sitting for my parents. I hated dog sitting as it required sleeping in my parents' bedroom away from my comfortable upstairs haven and feline confidant. Plus, I hated Halloween, a recent development on my part, as it used to be one of my favorite holidays. But now, at 22, I hadn't celebrated it in four years; it was just another reminder of how far I had fallen from myself.

I wasn't originally planning on dressing up, let alone thought about handing out candy. I planned on being a Scrooge and turning off the porch light while decaying in my misery via my Spotify playlist. But then, I stumbled upon a TikTok video featuring the song "Can't Fight the Moonlight," a tune I will forever associate with Halloween. I added it to the playlist, pulled myself together, and got dressed; I went as School Spirit Barbie that year, an ode to my younger self.

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I didn't buy any candy in preparation for the night, but luckily I have a sweet tooth, and a few days prior, my inner child needed healing, so I purchased the healthy lollipops my old boss from the art studio I worked at used to buy for us, a purchase I made in an attempt to find some form of comfort from the cognitive dishonest I had developed from my true self and now self.

I spent the next two hours in a rhythm of answering the door, giving kids candy, and sobbing on the floor once the door was closed. Kids trick or treating reminded me of my childhood and, in turn, of the journey that left me the broken girl I was at that moment. Once I ran out of candy, I sat down again at my computer and continued to finish this playlist.

The Blondie Has Thoughts Playlist was officially done on November 1st at 2 am, a solid fifty days before I left to start my "after" life, my new journey into a life fully curated by me. In a way, this playlist is a bridge between the before and after, the build-up to the life I thought I wanted, and the after, when I realized I no longer wanted to be that girl and the start of me becoming a new one.

It's a tricky thing: losing who you once were and who you worked your entire life to become. It's both good and bad, and also neither of those things. It's a fine line between; it's a balancing act.

This playlist is a mix of all the songs and genres of music that built me, supported me, and, in the end, helped me figure out who I was becoming and who I wanted to be. There's something in here for everyone except maybe the metalheads.

I hope this playlist helps you in a way that it helped me. Maybe it gives you peace during a time of need, motivation, or possibly inspiration. Or perhaps it's just here for you to have a good tune to listen to. Either way, I don't care as long as it makes you feel something.