I love music, but I never make it a priority. I never take the time to sit down and actively listen to anything. When I do want to listen to music, I feel overwhelmed by choice while simultaneously not being able to think of anything I want to hear. This blog is an attempt to rectify that, by reviewing an album a day, every day, for all of 2017. 365 days = 365 reviews.
Do I actually expect to achieve this goal? No. I do expect to try, and I do expect to listen to a lot of music along the way.
In 2014, I challenged myself to read and review 52 books in 52 weeks. Not necessarily a book a week — there wasn’t a schedule. But I wanted to have read and written about 52 books that year. I ended up reading more than 52 books, but I only reviewed 26 of them. I failed, but in the attempt I wrote more and more regularly than I have before or since, and I read a lot. And that was really the point. Not to meet the goal, but to set an absurdly difficult challenge and strive to meet it. The value of goals isn’t in achieving them but in the attempt.
So what do I intend to listen to? Hopefully a lot of stuff I’m very familiar with. And a lot of stuff I would never have listened to otherwise. A lot of obvious stuff. And hopefully a lot of obscure stuff. I haven’t actually compiled a list yet (I know the pressure’s on if I have to listen to something tomorrow), but I intend to. I also hope to come up with a way to take suggestions. I don’t know if I can think of 365 albums on my own.
A few years ago I listened to the entire discographies of a bunch of bands/artists, and it was a fun project, but I didn’t do anything except play the music. My hope is that by reviewing everything I listen to on this blog, I can come back to it after the fact.
My personal blog has never been read by many people, but every now and then a post will get hit with a lot of traffic from a search engine; usually a how-to of some kind. But I keep writing on it, because I read it. I come back to it later and get a kick out of reading old reviews of gadgets that were ahead of their time and now are laughably out-dated. But for those 26 books I managed to write reviews for I like knowing they’re there if I ever want to come back to them.
I saw a preview for a movie adaptation of The Circle recently, and I remembered hating the book, but I couldn’t remember the specifics of why. It was one of the 26, so I went back and read my review. Even though no one else but me ever read that post, because of this, I was glad to have written it. So maybe no one will ever read these reviews. And maybe I’ll flop right out of the gate and not even finish the week. But I will be able to find this blog later and enjoy it, even if no one else does.
Liner Notes Blog 