the soundtrack of my year

My year started out with this song. This was a real feeling of congratulation that Christchurch had made it through a massive earthquake in 2010 and, though some buildings had fallen, the city remained intact. No one died. There was a tremendous sense of togetherness. I remember sitting in a pub at the Arts Centre with a cold Pimms and ginger ale on a summer evening looking around me and feeling so lucky to live here. I also remember playing this song to myself and thinking, I'm almost feeling this good, all I need to do now is finish my Masters and I can really feel it:



Then there was the earthquake on 22 February, and I remember wondering if I'd ever have a hope of listening to that song feeling good again, let alone not feeling sick.

For some time afterwards, I listened to this song over and over, and I'm not exactly sure why, but it captured how I felt without actually being at all about earthquakes:



A few weeks after the earthquake, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami happened, and in Christchurch there was this horrible realisation that we weren't as badly off as we could be, and what was happening to the world? And all I could listen to was this song and feel very dark and desperate:



Maybe it was the following songs that pulled me out of this a little bit... they're not particularly positive either but they helped:





I don't know when the turning point came, but during the remainder of the year I came to love Ella Fitzgerald:



... and Mumford and Sons:



Maybe I had calmed down a little? Probably it had something to do with finishing my Masters and learning to think clearly again.

And now it's this:



I'm sure I'll do a "summing up the year" blog post in a wee while so I don't want to steal all my own thunder... but it has definitely been a year of learning to rely on God. Did you know that we can't even rely on the ground beneath our feet? So I've learnt and I'm still learning to put them elsewhere, and I'm happy with the song my soundtrack finishes on.