So I promised myself I'd write my blog more this year. My last update was a pathetic two months ago and it was a short one at that. I'm hoping to get in a rhythm and habit of writing and to consistently give you and myself something each week. So as I will share my new years thoughts, I hereby resolve to update my blog every Sunday if at all humanly possible. Fair warning, we all know how resolutions turn out, but at least I got it right on the first day.
Why Sunday? You may be wondering why this specific day but I figure its the day I have the most time in AND I tend to be more reflective after having church and a week t0 look back on. So fingers crossed and a big thank you to those that keep reminding me to do this. If I get it going pretty good, I'll stop sending those pecky facebook messages too.
Speaking of New Years, Clark and I were talking on our way to our evenings festivities about what 2010 was like. On the whole, we agreed that it was a pretty rough year in our immediate circle, a fairly tough year nationally, and a generally standard year globally. My immediate circle had its fair share of hardships: sch0ol debt kicking in, parking, speeding, and cell phone tickets, traffic accidents, fruitless job hunts, crappy jobs, threats of being laid off, stupid neighbors, foolish roommates, breakups, moving away, not able to find a place to move to, emergency room dashes, to those of you who had deaths in the family I send my prayers, I have a friend in ICU right now who is basically waiting to die, I know a who few dealt with arrests, my sister had a doctor scare and still needs to do some follow up, and to top it all off my mom was sick for Christmas for goodness sake.
Nationally, we had the big BP spill, harsh winter storms, jobless counts are still high, a wave of publicized gay suicides, the political state proved tumultuous, and Lebron James kicked Cleveland to the curb.
Globally, we were unstable, literally, as poor Chile and Haiti, among others, were rocked by big quakes, a volcano single-handedly stopped Europe from flying, North Korea tried to piss off South Korea, and the usual series of terrorist attacks frequented our headlines.
Why recount all this? Yes, to point out all the crappy things that 2010 had, though I don't think it an especially dreadful year, just tough. Instead I bring this up to to bring you to my point:
Pop music.
Yes I said pop music. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha (who was Billboards #1 this year lord help us) Travie McCoy, Bruno Mars, Rihanna, Black Eyed Peas and the like.
As has become my custom every year I eagerly await DJ Earworm's music mashup for the end of the year. He takes the Billboard Top 25 and mashes all the songs together to make a really clever and catchy new song. Last years was especially amazing and his summer one was also pretty good. You can find them all here: http://djearworm.com/
As I was listening to this years, I noticed that for the most part, the songs were pretty positive, fun, upbeat, danceable and all around happyish. Currently stuck in my head is Florence + the Machine's "Dog Days are Over", which I think characterizes my point. Other positive songs currently being played include "Fireworks" and "Just the Way You Are" by Perry and Mars respectively. Considering I generally listen to Rock and Classic Rock, the fact that I noticed this trend means it must be at least somewhat significant. Even rap music, which I generally avoid almost as much as country, mostly because I usually find the lyrics degrading or selfish had a positive song recently: "Coming Home" by Diddy. And its not just a recent trend either. Remember earlier this year saw songs like "Billionaire" and "OMG" which I think were foreshadows for a progressively more positive year.
So yes, despite a rather troublesome 2010, the music has gotten more and more positive, which I think can only be a good omen for 2011. So let's make it good.
On a side note, last year on New Year's Eve, my friends and I decided to try to celebrate in a bar rather at the cottage we were staying at, so we walked to the downtown area at 11:30. Finding, sheepishly, that all the bars were full, we opted to take cabs back to the cottage and try to arrive before midnight. It took two cabs. At 11:57, my cab arrived at the cottage. Much to our surprise the other cab had not, despite leaving before mine. 12 came and went and still they hadn't returned. At 12:15 the second cab pulled up and recounted how their cab had made an illegal u-turn and was pulled over. This spent the new year watching a ticket being written. We did a little mock countdown at 12:15 but it just wasn't the same. This year we actually did it right. Moral of the story: don't miss the countdown, it starts you off on the wrong foot.
I'm going to wrap this blog up for tonight but never you fear, next week will see another!
To be included: Why Brock should not play cards, a news update about Naysayer P Squirrel and his bouts of Italian Food, how Summercamp has changed this new school year, and why El Bandito should not be allowed to call the shots. Thank you to all of you and may you have a Happy and blessed New Year!!
Listening to: "Dog Days are Over"-Florence + the Machine... its SO stuck in my head right now
Reading: 100 Bullets- really really good comic
Playing: Jedi Outcast- an old game of mine that I rediscovered. Also, I have like 5 other games in the works... jeez.
-JTY
Interestingly the readings in church today were about christmas bringing the light to the darkness that was around the land. It kinda felt fitting that I was talking about 2011 as being more positive, a light to a dark 2010.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're updating this more! I want to read a blog entry that doesn't start with an apology about how long it has been. Every Sunday sounds good.
ReplyDeleteDog Days are Over = awesome!
Love,
your roomie currently delayed in London