Sunrise In the OCD Tunnel

In early October, I posted for the first time since February on Set List.  The topic was PMI - Persistent Musical Imagery.  My experience with PMI is linked to a type of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).  

PMI is devastating when music is a profoundly important part of a person's life.  I listen to music when I am physically ill, when I am down, when I am bored, and when I need musical company while active.  Without music, Set List would not exist.

I had the occasional earworm for years but managed the annoyance out of my head on my own.  As of the past summer months, PMI has lingered from the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep at bedtime.  Through the grace of pharmaceuticals and namely Prozac (with recent increase in dosage), my mental "radio station" airs not more than two songs per day - early in the morning and later in the afternoon (typically when I am most tired).  During the day, my mental "DJ" is unemployed.

I am an aspiring novelist and short story writer.  When not posting to Set List, I am penning chapters to my magical realism manuscript, The Elusive Hare, or bursts of creativity with a short story in my manuscript collection, The Uncommon Injustice.  When I handwrite a chapter or a story, I type it up the next day on my laptop.  Although I make on the spot edits while typing, I generally allow low-volume background noise.  

Where the noise used to only be classical music, I am now okay with jazz that has a beat but no lyrics.  As my PMI symptoms continue to ease, I am more and more tolerant of songs I used to blast on my iPhone or on my iPod.  The volume still needs to be low but the joy that has been brought back is loud.

With PMI as a type of OCD, there can not only be peace to survive (such as with Miles Davis) but sunrise at the end of the tunnel.  If you know me well on Set List, you know which song and artist I am hinting at with the word "sunrise."

So yes, play it Duran Duran with "Reach Up For the Sunrise."