My "Hard Times" Song

This week's edition of the disability blog carnival (to be published Thursday) will be hosted by Shiloh over at Sunny Dreamer. The theme is "favorite texts for hard times (songs, poems, scriptures, quotes, ...). This blog carnival theme was pretty easy for me. Quite possibly the easiest carnival to write on. I've only listened to my "hard times song" a thousand times in the last year, and probably hundreds of times last fall alone.

Every few months I get sick of all of the songs on my Ipod (all 1888 of them) and MUST purchase a new CD through Itunes. Last Sept (07) my purchase was the Grey's Anatomy season 3 CD. My former roommates got me completely addicted to the show, and anyone who watches knows how absolutely awesome the background music is. At the time I was looking for something upbeat and fast to match my mania and calm my workshop anxiety. The fact that most (if not all) of the songs are indie/not well known appealed to me as well. What I found though, more then 2 great fast upbeat songs and other interesting mid-tempo songs, was a great slow song. My "hard times song" is Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson (see you tube video and lyrics below). I don't love the scenes from Grey's, I find them rather distracting, but she apparently hasn't produced a music video for the song.

The storm is coming but I don't mind
People are dying, I close my blinds
All that I know is I'm breathing now
I want to change the world
Instead I sleep
I want to believe in more than you and me
But all that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now
All that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now

I would like to write some deep dark long winded post about how this song connects to me and what it means to me, but I just can't do it. The fact of the matter is that the connection is just too obvious. Right after the workshop was over I went into a severe depression and couldn't get out of bed.

"I want to change the world/ Instead I sleep/ I want to believe in more than you and me/ But all that I know is I'm breathing/ All I can do is keep breathing"

What's more obvious then that? All I was doing at the time was sleeping, and anyone who knows me in real life can tell you how much I want to change the world. I want to work with 'crip kids' as a 'child empowerment specialist' (anyone who's going, 'what the heck is that?' I completely made it up, and will not reveal what the job will entail. You'll steal my fantastic idea...) I played the song over and over and sometimes it was the only thing that kept/stopped me from crying. "All I [could] do was keep breathing."

So that's my "hard times song." Even last week I was having a bad day and crawled into bed with my Ipod and played the song over and over. Sometimes all you can do is breathe, and that's ok. Eventually you'll change the world.

What's your hard times text?