Chill Out

They call it chill out music, or lounge music. Spa music to some.  Study music to some.  Just plain ol relaxing music to others.

I call it waiting for a new heart music.

Just quiet instrumental stuff, kind of electronica.  Soft vocals and slow, powerful beats. A little piano...a little guitar.  Not really jazzy...but close.

It's a genre I stumbled upon on YouTube...maybe a few months back, and I am hooked.  I just love the way it makes me feel...and the way it frees up my mind to think about the things I need to focus on...namely getting a new heart, and more importantly...being ready for a new heart.

I have every intention of one day here soon waking up with this perfect, awesome, beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, new-to-me heart, that will allow me to finally...FINALLY have a new start at living the kind of life I can only dream about now.

I almost start shaking when I think about how life changing it is going to be.

So anyway, this music keeps me relaxed, and does an amazing job of keeping my mind off the enormity of all this transplant mumbo jumbo, and especially the stuff that could go wrong.   That negative, paralyzing 'what if' thinking can become a huge, raging, uncontrollable monster in no time flat if I let it...and I am 100% committed to not letting that happen to me.

As I have mentioned before, and this shouldn't be much of surprise to those wondering what it's like to be a stage 3/4 heart failure patient, but I don't have much energy these days to do much at all really. I am able walk, and do some light stuff around the house, but that's about it.  I tried wiping down the microwave the other day and had to take a 2 hour nap to recover...yeesh.

But instead of just sitting there feeling all sorry myself, or being all pissed off at my lot in life, or wondering if I am really, truly ready to get THE CALL...I find time each and every day, maybe just an hour or so, even 30 minutes, for me. Just me...mind, body, and soul...my headphones, and these mesmerizing, hypnotic sounds,..that's my happy place.

There I am truly able to take a step back from life, and just...be...breathe...relax...chill.

This music just connects with me...like deep down in my soul.  Kinda hard to explain...  

It helps in quieting my mind, and experiencing my body, especially my heart...in a way that few take the time, or make the time, to do.

Some call it mediation.  Mindfulness perhaps.

Whatever you call it, I like it.  More and more all the time.

It's just that there is so much to take in, to process, to try to make sense of.

Transplant is as much a mental challenge at this point as it is a physical challenge.. I can see how people in my shoes can and do feel overwhelmed with it all, heck I'd be lying if I said I didn't think that way myself from time to time.  I try not to, but I am human.

I think some people do indeed sort of sabotage any chance they have of a successful outcome...they sort of give up, on themselves, before they even get started.

For whatever reason some folks tend to listen to those voices that tell us the journey is too far...the mountain too high.  The battle to long.

I can't...I won't...let that be me.

So these tracks I've found are awesome...they help me lose track of time, without keeping track...if that makes sense.

And I try to stay in this mindful, meditative state of mind as long as the music plays....usually an hour or two.

As long as the music plays...kind of a metaphor for my life these days.

But I just lie back and experience being still..feeling what it's like to be in my own skin.  I let my thoughts come and go, and always try to return to just the sound, and the feel...of each and every beat of my heart.

And I've really begun to notice how uniquely different one heart beat can be from the next.

There doesn't seem to be much of the typical lub-dub lub-dub these days. instead it seems like it goes along just fine for quite a while...then wham....just wild crazy, fast, powerful beats...out of nowhere.

Takes my breath away sometimes.

When that happens I really try to just breath deeper, and slower, and see if I can get my heartbeat back to "normal" as quickly as I can.  I try to count 100, counting as many beats as I can, and appreciate each beat as a unique moment in time.  A moment in time that I am still alive and happy, and most importantly...one beat closer to hearing a new heartbeat.

So that's my life right now..for a bit of each day at least.

Bottom line is I'm trying as best I know how, and as best as I have learned here in recent months, to get my mind right in anticipation of this new heart.   I can honestly say that I now spend almost zero time thinking about what could go wrong...I'm in great hands with the medical professionals, and they know what they are doing.  Let them worry about the operation itself...my job, as I see it, is to be the absolute best in every other way I can, because I know the call could come at any time.

That's still a bit of a strange thought for me,  What it the phone rang now, and they said come on in. Am I ready?  Is anyone ever 100% ready?

Maybe that's too high of a bar to set for myself.  Again, are we ever really truly ready for anything?

It's best perhaps, to just let the magic of life unfold, as it always has, and always will.

I've have most certainly demonstrated, to myself at least, that I have done absolute best that I can to win this battle in mind my first...and that makes me very happy.

I try to stay in the moment as best I can.

And this music helps do just that.

Have a great day everybody!



Oh, go to YouTube, right now, and type in Ethereal Dreams--Chill Mix...that's what I'm taking about!