The Daily Commute.

The DC changed from season to season and employment to employment. Music helped pass the commute time.

Things weren’t going great in Feb, 2001. I thought I’d made a mistake in my post-military career choices. I was the sales operations manager for NetworkICE, a computer security start-up, and I just didn’t seem to fit. I’d been there about seven months, and I didn’t like it. I spoke with the guy that brought me on and told him my concerns. We addressed ways to alleviate my issues but nothing was resolved. Our meeting ended with him urging me to stay on. He couldn’t say anything more but he thought I should stay on.

So I did because I trusted him. Within a month, it was announced we were being acquired. Everything changed after that.

This song came out during that period. Driving the commute from Half Moon Bay to San Mateo, a quick jaunt up Highway 92 in the morning but a Conestoga wagon movement to return home in the late afternoon. That return trip offered a lot of listening time as we crept down the hill toward the ocean. Train was one of the big pop groups at that time, so I heard a lot of this song, ‘Drops of Jupiter’.

I enjoy the song’s verb and noun mix and the visuals they conjure.

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere
With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey
She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there’s time to change, hey, hey
Since the return from her stay on the moon
She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey, hey

The lead singer, Patrick Monahan, wrote the song, saying in an interview that it was about his mother, who died from cancer, and that the lyrics came to him in a dream. I always associate it with my own work-related strife, which was far less dramatic, because it was a musical release from a bad work situation.

Somehow, the song seems fitting.