Give or take a couple of weeks, this could be the soundtrack to 2024.

I climb onto the 6AM flight to Seattle and hear those opening notes of Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift through my earbuds Yawning behind an airplane window barely warmed by January's dawn, I nurse both a coffee and the hangover that came from last night's going away party. The song seems fitting — I'm the problem, it's me (leave aside everything familiar for a new job 3,000 miles away). The bass line thumps under my nerves, a pulse when mine feels anything but.

With The Lumineers blaring "Ophelia" through my Spotify playlist, the plane takes off into a grey-pepper sky. I first heard this song a couple of years ago in college, but it resurfaced with its message during my seemingly endless apartment hunting over December. Somehow its simple warmth had made the experience of scrolling through lists of overpriced studios feel somewhat less oppressive. And now, somewhere above Minnesota, I tell myself not to listen to the chorus: Oh, Ophelia — heaven help a fool who falls in love. I don't know what love is — unless we count falling for the notion of reimagination — but I get the feeling of being swept away by something greater than yourself.

February brings rain and Hozier's "Would That I" which carried on repeat over the sound of unpacking boxes in my tiny Ballard apartment, its haunting edges sweeping through the empty spaces between bare walls. The lines about setting what's before ablaze to create something new feel borderline cheesy, but that's not where music comes in. I tack up prints, rearrange furniture, and gradually turn the antiseptic expanse into a reflection of me, singing my way through it with Hozier telling me that leaves need to drop before anything can bud.

Cherry blossoms and new friends in spring. Someone plays the Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal," on portable speakers while hiking Mount Rainier for a weekend. Those harmonies bounce off the ancient trees, and for an instant, I am part of a fleeting Pacific Northwest moment. That song is the soundtrack to my realization of this place — I throw it into a playlist named "Seattle Becoming Home" and watch as it rises on my list of most played.

Summer comes like an epiphany. The grey cloak of the city lifts, and ugly Lake Washington takes on the impossible blue. Local bands are found for me by my co-workers, and Lord Huron's The Night We Met is the soundtrack to evening paddle boarding. The bittersweet indie rock seems in opposition to the golden hours spent out on the water but it also feels perfect – a reminder that all our best moments are laced with echoes of the past.

In comes Maggie Rogers, That's Where I Am bursting into my life in August with Alex. We run into each other in a coffee shop, and the track is playing, he says I have perfect tone while he's black. The Paramount Theatre — the energy of the crowd, the pulse of the music, everything felt possible on our first date there at one of her concerts. It becomes our song, although we both grumble about being too cool for such things. Original article

Changes come at work in the fall – new jobs, added duties, late evenings in the office. Lately, I have been going back to classical music, which I had barely listened to since child piano lessons. Ludovico Einaudi — Experience starts playing and I focus, the piano strumming perfectly lacing into my muscles tightening resolve to show the world I am also capable in my new job. On my most stressful days, I find myself closing my eyes in the five minutes between meetings and letting those piano notes wash over me like waves.

October: After my presentation at a tech conference goes viral somehow when Twitter gets hold of it. Over the absurd days that follow, I replay Japanese Breakfast's "Be Sweet" on loop. The way its bubbly indie pop and lyrics about earning respect from me feel perfectly penned for this strange new chapter in which random on the internet know my name. Now you tell the men I'm on my way, you tell me count the damn days.

Sure, here in November rain falls again — but this time something else. The grey skies have become that rhythm and I know they are just a part of the music we hear: like the coffee shops on every corner; like how conversations stop to let Mount Rainier show his face from behind the clouds. I hear something resembling peace during my morning runs listening to Bon Ivar's Holocene. And I immediately realized that I wasn't dignified — but perhaps there's nothing wrong with that.

With December approaching, I'm in the Taylor Swift zone again but not for "Anti-Hero." The 1989 cut "Clean" evokes for me the renewal that comes with transformation and walking through the rain to emerge a different version of yourself. Sitting in my apartment that overlooks sound and allows the light to pour through windows that between me and the next door neighbour finally feel like home again, I can see just how far . The bridge of the song hits different now: Ten months sober, I won't lie, just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it.

I miss things, of course. The corner the bagel place that I used to go near my old apartment. How my best friend would just roll in uninvited with takeout. The beat of a place I knew in my soul. However as I sit here putting together my annual year end playlist – a tradition I have had since college – I realize that just because you miss something, doesn't mean you made the wrong decision.

The music of this year speaks of change, finding home where it was never imagined, place after place, lyric after lyric. They remind us of how music is not simply a soundtrack for our travels but it can also be a guide for our travels, the sense that helps us give meaning to our emotions when we are lost and unable to find out just what we feel.

Iron & Wine's "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" was my most-played track of the year (thanks Spotify!). The day it found me — on a rainy Sunday morning in March when Seattle still felt like an odd overseas postcard rather than home. It became my comfort food and the thing I went back to when everything else felt a bit questionable — its light acoustic guitar lines and lyrics shrouded in ambiguity around change, adaptation. Now, while booking my holiday trip home to the east — the first time back since that January morning– I realize uncertainty is something completely different. Something like belonging.

And so the year wraps up, and Noah Kahan's "Northern Attitude," a new tune for my soundtrack, comes to me via Alex's winter playlist. Strolling through the Pike Place Market with holiday lights glowing overhead, so many lines about finding your footing in a new territory come to life. Kahan sings, "I'm learning to love the rain," and I lightly grasp Alex's hand with my mind wandering back to how some years change everything — not in spite of them but because of all they contain.

Their playlists are a form of diary — and mine is far from different. Every song is a moment in time, an emotion, a small victory, or silence battle. And combined, they tell the tale of this past year in which I learned home isn't always wherever you had been; sometimes it's wherever the music will take ya.