MOUSTASHIE: A Pick-Me-Up Playlist

A PICK-ME-UP PLAYLIST

I'm going to be honest with you, the last few days or so I've been feeling a little bit up and down emotionally. Sometimes I feel incredibly happy and content with my life, and other times not so much. It's also the whole expectations versus reality fandango, a la Tom in 500 Days of Summer, and it's also that feeling of wanting to change things somehow but not really knowing where to start. Obviously it sucks big time feeling this way, because all I want is to just be happy, but I'm hopeful that things will get better. Everything sort of culminated last night before I went to bed and going to sleep I kind of wanted to just stay in bed and hide forever, but what do you know, the over-active part of my brain was on fine form as always, and caused me to leap out of bed at quarter to eight with a feeling of dread, convinced that I was missing a lab practical. Now seeing as I don't actually do a science degree, hence I don't do lab work, my getting up was completely and utterly pointless. But you know what, I'm actually really grateful to the over-active part of my brain for doing that, because when I woke up I still felt kind of crappy (and not just because I thought I was missing a lab practical for a course that I don't even do). I was still in my 'all I want to do is just flop on my bed and stay there forever and ever' frame of mind, that is until I remembered that I've been meaning to go for a run all week, and suddenly I had the light bulb moment: hey presto, I would go for an early morning run.

So I got dressed into my running attire, did some stretches, grabbed my i-pod and ventured out onto my current favourite running route with the sun shining bright in the sky. Now I can't deny it, for the first ten minutes or so I was basically dying. I put it down to the £40 worth of pizza I helped consume on Friday night, the alcohol and cake I consumed last night, and the fact that I hadn't been for a run since the miracle that was me running 9k and living to tell the tale. But as always seems to happen, just as I was close to giving up, things got better. I turned a corner (literally), turned up my i-pod and decided to try again, and in a Forrest Gump like fashion, I began running again, finally finding my groove, and I didn't stop the whole way home. I actually even considered running even further than 5k, but obviously I'm not quite there yet, so I just settled for 5. When I made it to the imaginary finish line, I felt so incredibly proud of myself, and whad'ya know, it's true what they say about exercise releasing those happy endorphins because I honestly did feel a whole let better about everything. Then to top it off, when I got back I decided to lie down on my bed, put my legs up on my desk, open the window and the curtains, have the sunlight streaming in, whack on my head phones and magically, the most wonderful series of songs came up one after the other on my i-pod shuffle.

So I closed my eyes and just listened to the music. And I can honestly say I never fully appreciated how fantastic my headphones are till that very moment. The music sounded utterly incredible, and it was the nicest thing in the world to really actually listen to and appreciate each song in its entirety. Lying there on my bed, eyes closed, music on, gentle breeze fluttering through the window, golden streams of sunlight, exercise endorphins floating about my body, I felt completely content and at peace. I felt happy, and importantly, I felt a whole lot better about life. So I thought I'd share the playlist with you, just in case you've ever felt the same way too, and hopefully it will be exactly the pick-me-up that you were searching for...
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