Roseate

“Walking gave some of these thoughts somewhere else to go for a while.”

Journal Entry: Roseate

I was sitting in the office this evening with music playing quietly in the background. I couldn't tell you what was on, which probably says everything about where my head was at because normally I notice those things. Normally I'm listening for the details, feeling the groove, or just feeling a track and the energy it creates to see where it might take me… But this evening? No.

The music wasn't really music. It was just something occupying the room because the silence felt heavier than it should have.

It was one of those strange evenings where I wasn't exhausted in the way you expect exhaustion to feel. I wasn't falling asleep at my desk or struggling to keep my eyes open. It was something else. I had this feeling of having reached the end of the day but somehow not really having arrived anywhere. Like the day had happened, things had been done, people had been spoken to, problems had been dealt with, but when I finally stopped moving there wasn't much left for me.

I do this thing where I judge a day by how it feels rather than what actually happened. I know that isn't always fair because if I looked back properly, I would probably realise I had achieved more than I gave myself credit for. But in that moment that didn't really matter. The evidence of a busy day was there, but I couldn't feel the benefit of it. It didn't feel like mine. It felt like I'd spent all my energy pushing things forward for everyone and everything else and somehow ended up standing still myself.

I remember thinking about going to bed, but not wanting to. Not because I wasn't tired, but because going to bed felt like accepting that the day was over and I had nothing to show for it.

Which, to be honest, sounds ridiculous when I write it down now, because obviously the day wasn't empty. But that's just how my mind works sometimes. It can take something ordinary and turn it into a measurement of whether I'm doing enough.

or… whether I'm enough..? Fuck… wait, where did that come from?

So instead of going upstairs, I put my shoes on and went outside.

There wasn't really a plan. I didn't go out thinking I needed to clear my head or find inspiration or have some big breakthrough. It wasn't that intentional. I just knew I had been inside for too long and needed to be somewhere else. Sometimes the best decisions are the ones you make before you have time to analyse them.

I put my headphones in and just pressed play on whatever came up. No album. No carefully selected playlist. No particular sound I was searching for. Just whatever the suggestions decided to give me in that moment, maybe I’d skip over to the next one, or maybe I’d let it roll. Sometimes I love that, but equally there are times where I hate that.

For a while it really was, just a walk. I wasn't thinking deeply. I wasn't having some profound conversation with myself. Well, maybe not one that was as noticble anyway.

I was just moving. Looking around. Letting the evening happen.

Then at some point I noticed I wasn't skipping songs anymore.

It was such a small thing, but I remember becoming aware of it because normally I'm constantly searching for the next thing. The next track. The next thought. The next answer. But suddenly the music was fitting the pace of the walk, and without really noticing it my stride had changed. I wasn't wandering around trying to escape the evening anymore. I was actually part of it.

The music had started creating a little bit of space.

And in that space, those familiar thoughts started appearing.

• “Why does life feel harder now than it used to?”

• “Why does everything seem to require so much effort?”

• “Is something wrong with me?”

• “Am I losing interest in things I used to care about?”

Those thoughts are like old friends, they have visited me many times over the years. “Oh, you again?” Although somethings different this time.

Usually they arrive and I immediately start fighting them. Trying to understand where they came from, whether they are true, what they mean about me. They become something I have to solve.

I am a “fixer”, thats what I try and do.

But walking that evening, I noticed something different. I wasn't fighting them. I was just listening. “Oh, hello?”

They were there, but they weren't pulling me under. They weren't becoming a story about who I was. They were just thoughts passing through while I walked.

And maybe that sounds obvious, but for me it wasn't.

I think sometimes we can make our thoughts much more powerful than they actually are because we sit with them in the same place for too long. We stare at them. Turn them around. Examine every angle. Give them more importance simply because we've spent so much time looking at them.

Walking gave them somewhere else to go. As if to acknowledge them, but can’t “stop to chat, must be going”.

By then I was on the meadow path and I started noticing things I hadn't noticed when I left. The sound of the stones moving beneath my feet. The temperature dropping slightly as the sun disappeared. The colours changing in the sky as the light moved behind the trees.

There were birds flying overhead, completely unaware of whatever internal battle I was having with myself.

That was probably the thing that stayed with me most.

Nothing around me was waiting for me to figure everything out before continuing. The trees weren't worried about tomorrow. The birds weren't questioning whether they had done enough that day. The sun wasn't concerned that it was disappearing too early.

Everything was just doing what it does. What it always does, and will always do.

And for a brief moment I stopped trying to fight the fact that some things were difficult.

There were genuinely difficult things happening in my life at that point. Things I couldn't control. Things I couldn't just walk away from. Going for a walk hadn't changed any of that. I wasn't suddenly healed or full of answers.

But maybe I didn't need answers in that moment. Maybe I just needed enough distance to remember that difficult doesn't mean permanent.

The sun would come up again.

Tomorrow would arrive whether I was ready for it or not.

When I eventually turned around and walked home, I don't think I felt happy exactly. It wasn't some dramatic transformation where everything suddenly felt lighter. It was much quieter than that. Sorry if that’s what you were hoping for.

I just felt like I had returned to myself slightly. In the moment. At one with time, part of that sunsetting processs. Winding up for the day.

Later that evening I opened my laptop and started trying to find the tracks that had followed me on that walk. Not just the songs themselves, but the feeling they created. The little moments where something shifted.

That became the beginning of this chapter.

The moment I heard “Scared” by Fred again.. & Ynug Thug was somewhere in the middle of that journey. It was one of those tracks that arrived at exactly the right time. Not because it gave me an answer, but because it reminded me that maybe the story wasn't already written.

That maybe I wasn't just watching my life happen from the outside.

When I started building the mix, I knew that track needed more room. The original version felt like a doorway opening and then closing too quickly. I wanted to stay there longer. I wanted to sit inside that feeling before moving on.

The rest of the chapter naturally moved around that idea. Moments of energy and movement, then moments where everything pulls back again. Because that is usually how it feels in reality. You don't have one realisation and suddenly become a different person. You remember something, forget it, find it again, lose it again.

Maybe that's why the mix moves the way it does.

It isn't a story about fixing yourself.

It is just a record of one evening where I stopped fighting my own mind long enough to hear something else and notice what was happening around me that had none of the baggage I was carrying.

And sometimes that is enough.