A strange idea for a New Year’s Resolution

I wrote only seven entries for the entire month of November.

I blame my lack of productivity on NaSoAlMo, but at the same time, I feel kind of daunted by the backlog of listening I’ve accrued. It’s the same kind of backlog that made me redesign this site a little more than a year ago to be less of a burden. Now that burden rears its head again.

New, new, new, new, new — it seems most music writing focuses on what’s new and what’s next. I’ve been trying to focus more on what I like (note how I don’t say what’s good) than on what’s new. But the "new" trap is an easy one in which to fall.

So I’m toying with a strange New Year’s resolution for this site: to spend an entire year writing about nothing but what’s already in my CD collection.

In my head, I’m already trying to think of exceptions for that resolution. I mean, c’mon — new Shiina Ringo album in February, and I’m not going to write about it? That’s just mean.

At the same time, I would relish the opportunity not to keep up with jonses. There are plenty of sites out there with far better taste-making skills than this one. I also don’t want to lose minutes and hours listening to things just to see if I might write about it. I would rather spend those minutes and hours listening to things I want to write about.

Besides, I’ve been meaning to include more writing about catalog stuff for a while now. I would like to add more posts to this category.

I know I’m going to have to refine this New Year’s resolution a bit. Maybe write about old stuff I haven’t heard before? Include new releases by artists of whom I’m a fan (aforementioned Shiina Ringo)? I don’t know just yet.

New Year’s resolutions have a storied tradition of being broken anyway, so who knows?