Wanna Be Startin' Something

I read an article on Aftermath talking about the intentionallity of listening to music. The author purchased a stand-alone MP3 player and forced themselves to not have access to everything all the time. It flashed me back to middle school or high school where I had a CD player and could realistically only listen to a single album at a time. There are some albums I consumed this way and still think of as a whole, rather than the sum of its singles, Stankonia by Outkast or The Eminem Show by Eminem to name a few.

I really love music and I wanted to get back to that feeling of listening with a purpose rather than jumping around my 5-star rated tracks. This is a great way to listen to music as each track is a banger, but I felt I wanted to listen to the other things I have. And not just being fed an algorithm of tracks picked “for me.”

So yes, I did buy the MP3 player. I’ve officially been influenced. I figured I would take a week with a single disc/album. Since I’m going to focus on one album at a time, I’d reflect on what I listened to. I want to do a writing every week, but somethings get in the way, kids, life, etc. It could be every two weeks, or three. Or one per month. As long as I do it, I’ll be happy.

I set up my music library to feed me a random album when I check a specific playlist. I’ll load it to my MP3 player and press play. With no further ado, here we go!

2026

My sister recently shared with us her list of things to do in 2026. She specifically said we need to write it down to manifest it into reality. Here I am days later actually getting to do it. So, here’s my 2026 hopefuls.

• Move more. We pay $122 per month for a gym membership we use 3 months out of the year. I’d like to find some time in the day to actually get to the gym once in the next six months. Even if I don’t make it to the gym, there’s a walking pad in the house. That the biggest thing you can do for your health is that 0 to 30 minutes a day change that is be the biggest immediate benefit.

• Write more. I’ve got it in my head to be more intentional when I listen to music. To the extent that I purchased a standalone MP3 player just for that purpose. I’d like to listen to music and review what I’ve listened to album by album. I really like music and I want to put that on paper so to speak.

• Be more. This one is hard to articulate. I think it has a lot more to do with family and how I interact with them. There was always going to be strife, but I think in terms of my health, physical and emotional, really the best thing would be to just lesson those issues and instances. I’m not 100% sure what that means. It could be me. It could be others.

• Know more. I didn’t think about this one until I was half asleep after writing the prior three. I recently received a Flipper as a birthday gift. It is a pen testing tool with NFC, RFID, etc. I used it to turn on a TV and back up Yoto cards. Not much else. I’d like to be familiar with this tool. I’ve also switched my laptop to Linux, which I’d like to learn better as well.

It’s a short list, but achieving any one of these would be super. As with anything I do for myself, they each fall under the same challenge: time and commitment. Children mean you really need to commit to making time. It’s 10:30PM as I write this. I’m wiped, but if it’s getting me to a non-zero day, so be it.