Like the superstitious ways of a baseball player not washing his jersey during a win streak, I’ve come to equate my mornings based on the music that’s playing when I drive in.

Music is a great reflection of a mood or current state of mind so it should come as no surprise that a song or set of songs can set the tone for the day.

On Wednesday morning — the Wednesday I wrote this — I pulled the car out of the garage to a sunny, bright winter’s day.

I wasn’t giddy to go to work, but rather I was anxious just because this week has so much going on including our two biggest items: Another issue of the Austin Living Magazine is heading to press while at the same time the Herald’s biggest special section of the year, Progress, was being finalized. It’s a lot of work to be crammed into one week making it one of the most challenging, stressful times of the year.

No, I was not thrilled to be going to work, but you just can’t not go to work and you can’t wait until the last moment so you just have to step up and do it.

Before pulling onto the street I began to eagerly check what songs would set the tone. Naturally, I realized I forgot my glasses in the house. Not a deal-breaker, but certainly an annoying start to a day that started with such promise: Steak and eggs and crispy hash browns and toast, served with coffee.

That last detail really has no purpose to the story, but in the vein of every hipster with an Instagram account, I just wanted to relate that I had steak and eggs for breakfast.

Shoes back on, I headed back out, started the car again and pulled out into traffic with Better Than Ezra’s, “Good.” It was a nice throwback to my 90s self and I felt pretty good about the day.

Rolling down Fourth Street I began to turn onto the familiar course I take to work, when it dawned on me I forgot to take garbage out the week before and needed to ask for a special pickup so I’m not that person with bags everywhere on the curb the day it’s supposed to be picked up.

Again, certainly not the end of the day, but I was beginning to get an inkling as to how the day where the day was heading. Reversing course I headed to Y Waste and completed the very simple task of requesting a pick-up.

Here’s where the day so early started going south. There was virtually nothing on the radio or Sirius XM.

Sirius is a source of near constant frustration. I listen to about five stations religiously and the one that irritates me the most, Octane, is the one I want to listen to  the most. They claim to be your source for hard rock — if your source of hard rock consists of basically the same three or four bands over and over again.

There is another station — Turbo — that plays older hard rock, Lithium and its store of 90’s grunge rock, Hair Nation, the home of everything hairspray and spandex and Chill which consists of musicians like Moby and Kygo. That one is more of a recent listen in my musical evolution.

And yet nothing was on until I got to Hair Nation. I realize Hair Nation, complete with Dokken, Motley Crue, Poison, Firehouse, probably dates me a little, but it takes me back to a simpler time.

You never have to think real hard about these band’s lyrics. Partying is a pretty common theme along with broken hearts. But there was no Progress in those days. Just the car radio and about 50 laps around town.

Lake Wilson isn’t real big. It took about two minutes to lap downtown from my house, unless you were in cool-mode with an arm dangling out the window and seat leaned back.  Then it was three minutes or more if a sheriff’s deputy saw you and wondered there was only a pair of arms visibly driving the car.

It was awfully hard to  look cool in a car when you are vertically challenged.

Ahhh, but Bon Jovi. You never disappoint. I hit Hair Nation when Jon Bon Jovi was telling me that we were, “Half way there,” in the first chorus.

You don’t turn the station away from Bon Jovi. Young or old, you just don’t disrespect Richie Sambora like that.

I fired the volume to 18, a perfectly audible level to entertain both me and anybody else on the other side of Austin and cruised toward work.

I felt good about the day again. One of the best rockers in history was telling me that, “… we’ll make it I swear.” And when Jon says its going to be okay, then by God, it’s going to be okay.

And then I started thinking about work: Progress, the magazine, this column, everything else and I started to get pessimistic again.

Really Jon, can we truly, “… hold on to what we’ve got?” I wasn’t so sure anymore and by the time I rolled up to the first stop light, he was now imploring to me that, “It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not,” I started to think he was mocking me now.

What did Jon know about me and the work I needed to get done, the pressure? He didn’t and yet he kept pushing as I neared the Herald. “We’ll give it a shot.” Will we Jon? Are you going to help proof the magazine or lay out Progress?

The second chorus seemed a deliberate attempt to bring me to anger. He was prodding now and there almost seemed like there was a sneer in Ritchie’s whining guitar. Oh, what. Et tu Ritchie?

I was suddenly in a pretty foul mood until I was passing by the Salvation Army. Jon tried one last time, giving me a lift, “Ooh, we’ve got to hold on, ready or not.”

No, no that wasn’t Jon mocking me, or Ritchie sneering at me. They were joined by David Bryan and Tico Torres all of whom telling me they were firmly in my corner. David’s synths lifted me and Tico’s drum beat out a rhythm to a day that would end in success.

Yes, Bon Jovi, yes. I do “… live for the fight when it’s all that you’ve got.”

I marched into work, full of the promise that only strong stadium anthem like “Living on a Prayer,” could bring.

Now somebody loan me a pen, I can’t find mine.