Tag: music

December 13, 2024 – ‘Fun Day’ Friday

December 13, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Friday’s have held a lot of memories for me. When I was a young professional, Friday was the day that the decision makers left work early. The schmucks that were actually doing the work (like me) were stuck with the same everyday work and less agency to do anything. My co-worker coined the term ‘Fun Day’ Friday for that situation.

There were times in my career that I liked to work Friday nights. I could have free run on the servers without having to compete with other interests or coordinate anything. It made life so much easier to be able to work without obstruction even though I was pretty beat.

Later, as I became a manager I tried to built some team comradery by creating an open playlist on YouTube. I set the tone and then invited the team to contribute. The songs were sometimes silly, they sometimes described the week but they were always intended to blow off steam. Consequentially, I often found myself streaming music on Fridays trying to distract myself from the stress of the week.

This entire year, I have been working on catching up with the back catalog of The Art of Manliness in any free time I have had. As a result, I have not played any music on Fridays this year. To be honest, it is like a distant memory and I have forgotten that I like to do that. Sometimes it was feel good country, sometimes it was heavy metal and sometimes it was antiestablishment rap like Eminem.

The good news is that I am almost caught up and then I am going to stop looking for new podcasts for a while. After listening to podcasts constantly for the last 15 years, it is time for a little variation. It may be time to do a little house cleaning as well. I want to be entertained and inspired. Sometimes that is hard to practice when I am constantly getting input from others.

End Your Programming Routine: With most of my work being so heavy and serious, I thought it was high time to do something different. Next week I am going to have the Festivus podcast so I will be airing my grievances for the year. While that intended to be a little tongue and cheek fun, a little levity for the season is in order.

One last thing, I have decided that the next book is going to be The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Look for the first chapter review to be January 3, 2025. There are a total of 12 chapters so we will get through this book by the beginning of April. I say this with plenty of time so that you all have the ability to get a head start as we go into the new year.

August 1, 2022 – Music and Memoires

August 1, 2022 /

I am keeping short and sweet again. Listen to hear what I am saying! The playlist that accompanies my podcast can be heard here.

End Your Programming Routine: Every day things get a little bit better. I find that certain songs have the capability to appease anger and transition to a better mind state. Find your inner peace and be that rock in the storm. It definitely isn’t easy, I keep praying for resolution.

September 1, 2021 – Wake Me Up When September Ends

September 1, 2021 /

Continuing on the theme of music as a distraction today, can you believe that today is September 1? My kids are going to a half day orientation for school today and tomorrow. The summer is for all intents and purposes over. As my wife and I were talking last night, we did some fun things but all-in-all it was another Covid summer. I can say that my kids are looking forward to going to school and having a little bit of normalcy even if it isn’t.

When I was looking up songs to help with the playlist for my father-in-laws funeral last week, I was reading on one song list that ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ was the number one grief song. It was apparently written about the passing of Billie Joe Holliday’s father in 1982. When you read some of the comments, they are all people hurting, except for today when people just want to comment and be silly.

It is interesting that the video does not actually match the true intent of the song. It does however have current relevance. We don’t know the true story, but it seems like the boy enlists and ends up in either Iraq or Afghanistan where he becomes a casualty. We don’t know his fate, but it seems like the parallel reality to this story is the girlfriend waiting and worrying about the boyfriend.

I am going to diverge for a paragraph here. I was sickened and horrified by September 11, 2001. But to start a twenty year war with two theatres and all of the senseless death, destruction and cost was a total waste. In 2001, I was at the apex of my Republican beliefs but I was on the fence about war. Now, in 2021 I am totally against any form of aggression outside of self defense. I am hard pressed to find vengeance as justification for war. This was George W Bush’s war, but Obama campaigned in 2008 for ending it which he never did, Trump actually set the withdrawal date and Biden finished it. I feel really bad for what is currently happening in Afghanistan but we cannot correct a wrong with another wrong (by staying in country).

I am not sure when things will return to normal at my house. September 13, my wife has tickets to return to Texas to support her mom with cancer treatment. Everything is so much up in the air at this point because there is no return date on that trip. There is a real possibility that this is another trip ending in bad news. There is another possibility that this trip is not just two weeks like the last one. We are going to do our best to stay strong and normal as possible.

You can probably tell from my writings over the last couple of weeks that this family is still grieving. The funeral service was a milestone which I don’t see as the end but rather the beginning of the cycle. People were so focused on the logistics of the service that there was no time to grieve. Now that is over, emotion is boiling.

But, I don’t want to make another post strictly about grief. Sometimes I want to hear a certain song, I will look it up on YouTube and then I let it play. The problem is that when you do that too much, the AI starts to develop a pattern and then it goes into the same genre loop every time. Sometimes I use a different browser so I can try to fake that it is me. I like to have some variety from time to time. It is kind of like Chicago, maybe I want one song and not everything in that particular genre or artist.

In my previous job, I used to frequently create a Friday playlist. You can see it on my YouTube channel still. They were songs that I thought captured the week or were funny or silly. After I set the initial list, I would open it up for the rest of the team to contribute. Sometimes they did and sometimes not, but we would usually put it on while we were working Friday afternoons.

Maybe I should have been a DJ? I am not deep into all of the facts about bands and songs but rather the connection music has with emotion. There is something about the senses of sound and smell that have a more triggering connection to memory more so than sight. It is probably because we are constantly using our eyes, but when we isolate our other senses, then we are specifically focused on that particular pathway.

End Your Programming Routine: If we are not careful, we will wake up in a few short days and it will be October 1. I don’t want to skip through the month, I want to get through the month otherwise we will be at the exact same place as we are now.