Music is important. In my twenties, every January, I developed an annual tradition to seek out the best music of the year. This habit is chronicled in a few of the early posts of this blog. I’m not sure when this tradition died, sometime about 5-10 years ago I guess. Streaming services like Pandora and Spotify helped kill it. They just made it too convenient. They removed the work. They removed the discovery and active listening. They removed the learning and joy at finding something that I loved.

A few weeks ago I was cleaning out a dusty area of the house in the basement and found a few of my old burned CDs. Music that I once loved enough to put onto physical media for posterity. Bands like, I am Robot and Proud, The Boy Least Likely To, Human Highway. After cleaning the basement, I added a few tracks to my Spotify liked list, made a mental note that it is truly a shame I still don’t actively search out and listen to music anymore. My life used to have a soundtrack.

Last week I was doing grocery shopping, listening to Spotify on my headphones. Just trying to complete this mundane task as quickly as possible. The song “The Work” by I Am Robot And Proud came on, and I almost broke down in tears.

I want to recover the lost parts of myself that were wonderful.