You know how a song can take you right back to the place you were when you first heard it?  Maybe its just me, but I always have a flood of memories when I hear a song again that I associate with a particular period in my life.

Recently I went spelunking through Youtube, looking for the band stylings of a former friend of mine.  It also lead me go searching for other rock band stylings and listening to the music took me back in time.  Join me my blog audience while we travel back in time.

In November 2007, nearly to the day of today, I sat in my absolutely giant new apartment in Stockholm.  I think my current living room is the size of the kitchen in that place.  How had I gotten there?  I had gotten a job with an international organization whose name rhymes with Surpeon Funion and I had moved there.  I mean more precisely I had gone there with some suitcases with the hope that my stuff would eventually follow me over there.

And the job.  Oh my, the job.  The cast of characters were really interesting.  There was the novelist, the non-speaking microbiologist, the deca-lingual woman and the crazy haired, cardigan wearing drummer.  Heart stopping in his cardigans may I add.  Now those were the funny parts of it.

Then there were the less good, more bad part of it.  Unfortunately the more bad parts outnumbered the good, because as it turned out I did not get along with the person who was to be my supervisor.  Rather spectacularly we did not get along.

No job is perfect.  No situation is perfect, but in this job, I think I had only one good day on the job and that was a day when my supervisor was gone.  After work everyday I’d get home and listen to this band the crazy haired drummer had given me the CD of.  Yes, we’re talking that long ago.  The band was called Willowtree and the music just absolutely captured how I felt at that time.  The first song on their album includes the words, sung to a happy tune “everything is going down the drain.”

At that point, I thought, everything was really going down the drain.  There I had moved halfway around the word to work for that Funion and it had all gone spectacularly wrong.  The job was really too difficult for me and required someone with a lot more experience.  The Funion either ignored that or didn’t care when they got me over there, not to mention it was taking a long time to just get everything off the ground with everything.  Making a social life was really difficult.  Everything bothered me including the fact that during the Swedish winter, there was daylight for about 10 minutes.  I’m kidding.  It was at least 20 minutes.

Everything came to a sudden and dramatic end.  I’d like to say that I exited the job quietly and with style, but really I didn’t.  In the end though, it really didn’t matter.  I keep in touch with two former coworkers and they might actually read this but they know the story.  If someone I did work with does find this, I can tell them that I use that experience as an example of how your past doesn’t really matter, answered prayers are the ones that cause the most heartache and most of all, were it not for that spectacular failure, I wouldn’t have gotten on the path to the job I’m in now that I thoroughly enjoy.

Now nine years later, I listen to the Willowtree album on my phone while writing this entry, on a cold November night just like the one when I first heard it recalling all of what happened to me as a distant memory.  Thank god.

Oh and here’s some photos from when I went to Canobie lake.  Because this is a picture blog so I should post some photos.  Yup.  No transition there: