One of the things I dislike most in life is when I get into a music rut.

Meh.

When I get ready in the morning, I’m listening to it. When I’m driving to work, I’m listening to more of it. I can’t listen to it when I work, because then I won’t focus. But I listen to it when I’m back in my car heading home, and I listen to it on those glorious DirecTV music channels.

A lot.

I’m a big fan of the 80s station when I’m cleaning, doing laundry or cooking, and I love opening the French doors to the patio and blasting it when I’m doing some gardening.

I may be one of the lone users of CDs left on the planet, but I don’t care. With CDs — particularly the store-bought ones — come album artwork and printed matter and gloriously inky images with lyrics spanning folds that invite you to keep reading, to keep singing and to have a tiny peek inside the musicians’ lives. When I used to buy cassettes in my younger years, I loved to smell the printing, and each album smelled differently to me.

I place so much importance on music that when I’m in a music rut it puts a big damper on things. It affects my motivation.

My outlook.

My mood.

Sometimes I’ll take my car to the car wash and remove a few books of CDs. The likes of Cinderella, Poison, LA Guns, Sarah Brightman, Yanni, Marc Cohn, Bon Jovi, Robert Plant and Tom Petty hang out in my trunk. I suspect it’s the only time they’ll ever be together. I don’t know why I refuse to use the MP3 port in my car, but I do. I’m just a creature of habit, I suppose. I like my CDs, and I like my good ol’ radio, complete with ads.

Yesterday I went to the car wash and stuffed everyone into the trunk; I have a habit of forgetting to take them out so that they can return to climate-controlled comfort with me when I leave. I was feeling their absence today.

While I didn’t have anything new in the books anyway, my current batch of six CDs had been in rotation for quite sometime. Yawn. I needed something new, but what?

I made due with the same ol’ tunes and headed home, uninspired.

I watered, and continued feeling uninspired.

I fertilized the roses until my Miracle-Gro Liquafeed feeder malfunctioned, and then I felt really uninspired.

I watered the back parkway and endured a couple of nibbles from hungry mosquitoes, then came inside and watched a few uninspiring episodes of Family Feud. The contestants’ answers told me I should’ve stuck with my usual Monday night routine of watching The Golden Girls reruns.

But then, behold, the power of Facebook! With a swift login and quick scroll through the wall, my eyes fell upon a new offering from one of my favorite bands — Keane — courtesy of KCRW’s Jason Bentley.

And as I watched the video I felt inspired again — just like that.

Tonight I am thankful for the power of music, the magic of lyrics, the inspiration in a melody and for the tasty Bentley offering that delivered all of these things in one, beautiful song which he described as “impossibly infectious.”

I agree. But its timing magnified everything that much more.