I was fast approaching my deadline with nothing good to say, but yesterday there came a saving grace—a friend asked for an emergency playlist anticipating a break up. He gave me a mission: songs to scream on the drive home. "Something angsty and bittersweet. Emotionally vindicating but also tragic."

One (inconvenient) symptom is that I can't listen to music anymore. I can no longer take the emotional stimuli. As a music writer, it's distressing; as a lover of irony, it rules. I'm like a sober bartender, but less respectable and more bemusing.

Now I'm in a perilous position, having a weekly mixtape platform that also doubles as what is essentially a diary, the perfect storm for a broken heart to make a complete ass of itself.