...In With The New

Since my last post of two months ago, things have kind of stayed the same. It's been a crazy-busy-stressful time, and I have done a LOT of eating to help cope with the shortage of personal time and space in my daily life.

I've also been making a mental list -- a double-bulleted mental list -- of

• the ways in which my life lacks a reflection of my personal tastes, wants and needs
  and
• my actual personal tastes, wants and needs.

For example, I have given up the personal time I used to spend listening to music, absorbing it, meditating on it, letting my thoughts form around the sounds until I learn something new about myself. That's time I now spend doing things like fretting about the degree of nastiness ground into our dirty carpet. 

...But even given that time, what kind of music would I enjoy? I mean, what bands out there do I really like that much these days? Coming from an avid singer with a music degree, the question seems absurd. But that's how far down the ladder I've put my own wants and needs. It started 12 years ago when I told myself that if I wanted to get out of the godforsaken hellhole I'd wound up stuck in, I needed spend less time analyzing music and more time reading non-fiction and research business/grad-school opportunities.

You see, when I need to carve a new path for myself, the only way I can get there is by removing more-pleasing alternatives from the list of possible options. Otherwise, I become distracted by and get engrossed in more interesting things that don't serve my end goal.

Hence:

It's been years since I knew what genre of fiction is my favorite. Non-fiction creates knowledge, knowledge leads to action, opportunity and jobs!

It's been years since I knew what my favorite musical genre really is. Saving money after college meant: No more CMJ subscription, no more CD-budget, no digital music players or related gadgets to tempt me to spend away my meager savings $0.99 at a time. It also meant more time to read all that non-fiction and watch the news.

Crappin' piece of crap!
I love you, you're all I
have in my alone-time
space...

I seem to remember that my most important piece of furniture was always my stereo. Seriously. My Dad was a jazz musician who always had a kickin' stereo, and I happily inherited them. I've worn a few of them out. I don't even have a stereo in my bedroom now -- you know, the bedroom, the one place I can go and pretend to be alone. I've stole my toddler's boombox, but it isn't in stereo and doesn't even have a headset jack. I can't even "seek" within tracks -- in fact, the only reason I've given myself "permission" to have it in my room is because she's at an age where she'd climb the walls to get it down, and then break it/electrocute herself. So it's not even mine. And it's not good enough to use for "letting my thoughts form around the sounds" anyway. It's a piece of crap.

Yeah.

But it's not like I can just chuck all these learned behaviors. I mean, I still have to save money, especially given the last couple years worth of unexpected income-lowering stuff that's happened to my family. And it's not like I can just close the bedroom door, turn up the stereo and zone out -- as a parent, partner, and daughter-in-the-room-next-door, I'm on-call 24/7. My partner does a great job at attempting to give me some personal time. But I use most of that time completing long-overdue projects, or sleeping.

Therefore, it's not "Out With The Old". Nope, because that's just stupid. Stupid, and would result in Resolutions that are broken within days.

But it's definitely In With The New. Because this year... I WILL invest in music. I WILL read some books just for fun. And I WILL be better for it.