All Time Low-the heart of the ordinary

I discovered All Time Low pretty late in my musical journey. I was a senior in high school and my emo phase was well on its way out. I wasn’t feeling settled in the world of Black Veil Brides, Falling in Reverse, and other angsty bands, so I was looking around. I can’t remember the exact moment I first heard them, but I remember getting pretty hooked on their 2011 album, “dirty work.” It was a fun and simple album that kept with a consistent “feel good” vibe. 

I needed that at the time. High school was coming to a close, and it felt like my entire world was about to come crashing down. Well, I guess in some ways, it actually was. I was about to move out of the country, as well as be on my own and everything. It was a big change, bigger than I was able to process amidst finals, packing and college applications. But the big thing that always scared me was the idea that a life of having fun and being happy was about to come to an end. I think we have all had at least one person tell us to enjoy our teenage years, because nothing is as good after that. Trouble was, I was depressed most of high school. If this was as good as life got and I had spent most of it depressed, what did I really have to look forward to for the rest of my life? 

There were a lot of unknowns to come, and how I faced them is another story. What matters right now is that the songs of All Time Low painted an entirely different picture of what life after high school could be. From tales of whimsically adventuring through the ordinary, to making the most of dead-end jobs, this band told wondrous tales of the ordinary. I had always dreamed of a normal life before this, but very few stories helped paint the picture. Everyone wanted to talk about grand adventures and doing big things. Nobody wanted to make regular life sound like fun. All Time Low helped to change that. 

That leads to a big question: what exactly is normal? For starters, it’s not moving around all the time. It’s anchored in one place. I wouldn’t go as far saying that I would never move. That’s a little extreme. I just wanted to be in one area long enough to be able to build some permanent relationships. I wanted to have a specific place that felt like home. 

I had never known that feeling before. There were places that felt familiar to me, but familiar and home are two different things. You can know the back of your hand like, well, the back of your hand, but that doesn’t mean that you like everything on it. That mole might drive you crazy, and you may not be able to get rid of that scar from when your cat scratched you in the third grade. But you can still know it’s all there. I always made the most of what I had, but I had a lot of cat-scratch places in my life, and no shortage of chaos. I just wanted my adventures to be over. 

The peak of my all time low obsession was when I heard the song “somewhere in neverland.” Man, did that song stick the landing! And the way this song felt was like nothing I had ever felt before. Usually, when I fell in love with a song, it was something melancholy. It met me in my pain by recreating the feeling and the catharsis let it all out. With this though, it was all about taking that feeling and offering a dream of getting out of it. I thought about the future as a story of chasing neverland, rather than falling deeper into a pit of despair. When I said goodbye to the halls and the classes, I wasn’t saying hello to a job and the taxes. Weekends weren’t just another part of the 9 to 5 routines. Instead, they were about friends, laughing about the wine that stained their teeth. Life was about dreams of what could be if we only dared to chase the lives that we wanted, even if they were just a little unconventional, or even frowned upon. I would wrestle with that idea in years to come, but those dreams, those values–they never left me. They’re still a big part of what I have always wanted my life to be about. 

I think the biggest part of that dream could be summed up in one word: simplicity. One of my fears was that I would be bogged down with obligations, reaching a point where my life stopped being truly mine, but an ever-growing pile of must’s. I mean, that’s what it felt like sometimes–I’d wake up, go to school, do the required extracurriculars to look good for college, come home, do homework, sleep, and repeat. I guess you could say that I was a little hamster running on his wheel, just to stay alive. It was miserable. I wanted the must’s to sort themselves out so I could keep my eyes on what I wanted to do with my life. Was that so bad?

It’s not to say that I just wanted to have fun and party all the time. I just wanted to live for something other than trying to stay alive. After all, we all fail that goal eventually. Why not fail it in style? If I was going to work for something, it was going to be something with meaning. I already knew what a bleak life felt like, and I didn’t want that feeling to follow me for longer than it had to. 

There’s another idea that I associate with normal: unimportant. That word tends to give people an icky feeling. We use that word when we want to say that things don’t matter. In a way, that’s what I’m getting at, but it can actually be a good thing sometimes. Think of a big event–a wedding day, Christmas morning, or a birthday. They all have to be a big deal. But a regular ol’ Saturday? They’re cool, but another one will come next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. If you have a rotten one, it isn’t the end of the world. 

No pressure. That’s what it's all about. And there’s a great deal of joy to be had in letting go of the need for every day to be great. It’s exciting, even inspiring. To wake up with a “whatever” attitude, wasting half of the morning watching cartoons and eating cereal. There’s nothing better. That’s ordinary. That’s the kind of life I wanted to live. One where everything was awesome because nothing really mattered too much. 

I feel like I grew up in a spot where everything mattered. Proms were massive extravaganzas, plays were broadway performances, sports teams became your life, and in between we had to do massive things for God because we were on His mission fields. It was a lot. I don’t blame anyone for putting that pressure on us though. That’s just life sometimes. There are pros and cons to everything. But it all put me in a place where I wanted to be done with adventure if I could help it. 

In some way, every kid wants to walk away from where their parents started them. It isn’t anger or rebellion, it’s just coming into your own. This life of the plain and the simple–well, it was mine. It still is. It feels weird sometimes. It feels like I’m living in uncharted territory. But deep down, I feel a harmony with life. The more I tune myself in to this anchored-down life of mine, the more I feel like I have found my neverland. And I owe a lot of guidance to All Time Low. 

Until Next Time

May Peace be your Guide.