Blogocentric Formulations

Head Above Water

DAY 4

"Head Above Water"
by Avril Lavigne

If you would have told me the pop-rock chick of "Sk8er Boi" and "Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend" fame would, 10-15 years later write a really powerful, almost haunting song about her struggle with Lyme disease, I wouldn't have believed you. But I guess the world forces us all to grow up in different ways and the things we create in response to those challenges are what evolving as an artist is all about.

For me, this song is particularly meaningful because I discovered it in the midst of my job insecurity last year. For those of you who don't know, I left a stable job in June 2018 for a big new opportunity at a startup, only to discover the owner of the company lied to everyone about the stability of the financing and ultimately laid most of us (myself included) off in a very short period of time. I worked at that company for less than four months, which is by far the shortest tenure I've ever had at a job, including that one time I worked for the film department equipment office for a semester when I was in college. I subsequently lined up some consulting work and thought I might be able to make a sustainable living as an independent contractor, and then had a couple of full-time job offers come up within a few weeks... all of which really had my head spinning about what next step I was supposed to take in my career.

I had been listening to Amazon Music and Apple Music for a few days to find some new tunes, stumbled across this song, and it was one of those moments where I literally stopped in the middle of a run to just stand there and listen to the song as it played. And then listened to it again. And again. It just seemed to relevant to my situation at the time... and that was reinforced when one of my wife's coworkers had been praying for me and made me a mix CD of inspirational songs to help me through the career decisions I was making... and this was the first song on the CD.

Ultimately, the job situation worked out for the best, but I think this song is a testament to those times in all our lives when we feel like we're drowning and are calling out for help. Sometimes, we all just need a little reminder to keep our head above water.

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Written for "The Soundtrack of Your Life"