Whether I like it or not, 90 degree temperatures have arrived here in Arizona. I won’t lie, it’s kind of a bummer. For someone whose lived here my entire life I can’t stand the heat. And, despite what literally everyone says, you don’t get used to it. I truly appreciate any day I don’t get sun poisoning from spending more than 1 hour outside. But as much as I despise the blah warm days, there is one thing I do enjoy: driving with my windows down.

I love rainy days and rainy winter days even more. Here is a rainy winter day approved playlist perfect for getting cozy or cooking soup on a cold winter day.

This year I'm having a love/hate relationship with Thanksgiving. I typically love Thanksgiving although it's a holiday everyone else would rather skip over in order to get right to Christmas. I think my love of Thanksgiving stems from when I was a kid because when Thanksgiving was finally here so was Christmas. But now Christmas pretty much starts in July essentially ruining the season by the time Christmas actually comes around. But I digress. I think this year's Thanksgiving is upsetting to me because the year is almost over, and I just don't feel like I've accomplished anything I truly wanted to do.

It's my favorite mix of the year just in time for Halloween weekend. Let's get spooky. 

As I sit here writing this I can't help but wonder where half of the year went. It seems like just 5 minutes ago I was really hopeful about the year ahead, and now that's half over I feel pretty bummed out. I'm definitely not anywhere close to where I thought I would be 6 months ago, but I guess that's how life works. Posting another What I'm Listening To after just posting one last month seems like a bit of a cop-out, but I have a good reason. There have been so many good new releases this past month and just some songs I've had on heavy rotation lately. 

I truly can't believe it's (almost) June. On the one hand, I'm excited about all the new music June is bringing (Hello, new Father John Misty!) but on the other hand, I'm incredibly bummed. Mainly because I feel like much of my time is being wasted by situations out of my control. It doesn't matter what I try that feeling just doesn't go away. Rather than keep harping on it, I'll get to the point of this post: my current playlist. Ultimately I try to make playlists sparingly. The more you make, the more mediocre they become sometimes. I know that is a bold statement considering my mission to create a monthly themed mix for this blog.

This is my very first blog post on my new domain name. Although I fear I may end up changing it once more before anyone even reads this. Choosing a domain name is hard. Mostly because I have to define what this blog is about while making people interested. Some people are really good at nailing this, and I'm just not. But Nicole, you are a marketer. You should be able to sell your personal brand better than anyone! Yeah, I wish that was true. I might be able to sell others, but selling myself is a little different. How do you define yourself in a short, catchy name?

We spend so much of our lives curating the person we want others to see, and sometimes it can feel draining. Not to mention when you hit emotional lows and feel like you just can't really show that to other people. It's almost like the masks I (we) continually wear have just been exposed revealing far too much to the outside world. This feels way too deep for a measly little post about a playlist I made, but hey what can you do?

The list is fulled with indie rock and some hip-hop albums that I really enjoyed over the past year. If you read this blog frequently or know me in real life, you wouldn't be surprised by that at all. This post contains three things: the album list (in no particular order), a sampler playlist featuring gems from the albums on the list, and a link to another (recently updated) playlist featuring plenty more songs from 2017 that were played in fairly heavy rotation. My hope is that you'll agree with at least some of my choices or that you'll find something new to listen to you'd hadn't considered or heard of before.