I stumbled onto my old Last.fm profile the other day, and wow—the whiplash. It sent me straight back to being twenty-something, living in a small room at my parents’ house, pretending to be an adult in a new career.

Looking back, I think the thing I envy most was all the time I had, even when I was working to make a name for myself.

I used to spend hours digging through niche blogs, hunting for obscure tracks. I fell deep into experimental bluegrass and Americana, mostly because of the people I worked with: these raccoon-eyed video editors who spent their nights glowing in front of monitors instead of having social lives. We were all a bit lost, I would wager, and the music fit. I was getting over a bad breakup, and those songs were the only things that made sense. They even pushed me to record an album of my own, just to get the feelings out of my system.

Then, life happened. Specifically, kids happened.

The long, quiet nights of headphone sessions turned into nights of feedings and exhaustion. Discovering new bands felt like work, so I stopped doing it. I stuck to what I knew.

I still ask myself if that’s a bad thing. Is it sad to rely on a soundtrack that hasn’t evolved in a decade? Nothing I hear today grabs me by the throat the way that music did. But maybe that intensity requires a void that I just don’t have anymore. That kind of obsession belongs to a version of me that was lonely and searching.

I look at my life now—tired, busy, but full—and compare it to the “freedom” of that heartbreak. I think I prefer the noise of right now.