Old Notes + Slightly Older Person

I was planning to write an entry off-the-cuff rather than sifting through the drafts I have (usually almost) ready for publishing. At the moment I have two folders for drafts: one that has one file and another that has a bulk of my drafts and published (I am going to move it to the 'published' folder! Yes! I appreciate the reminder!!!).

The lone draft has been sitting there since I started the series. I read it again and noticed that I wrote it more than two years ago. At which I had finally got to the tipping point with being resistant to having a dedicated mailing list. The idea that pounced on me (in a good way: you know when you didn't know one of your buddies was there and they say a normal 'Hello'! And you go 'Aaahhh!') was a bit a combination of being aware of Austin Kleon's 10 things a week (I struggled to keep up with that one because one page birthed page upon page....and you know how I get with tabs) and Ryan Holiday's monthly book recommendations.

(Yes, I did have that thinking: ‘Um what would I write that I don’t already share publicly!?’)

So…when the idea initially came, it was to give updates about my journey in going through all of Deezer’s 40 million tracks. The sweetest thing about the idea (I was doing a ‘mind victory dance’ --- or maybe I really did dance?) was that it was possible for me to have a track discovered as the center…then I can riff off it as much as I saw fit.


When I hit my second wall (the first wall was the circular result I got when rejecting Deezer recommended tracks only to notice that it would get played again after 5-10 skips) it was a bit disheartening because I found that I could no longer use a similar approach (add and reject tracks with ease while quickly building up my general playlist).

[I did later understand one of the things that caused the feeling of having heard a track before…it was because a track could have come from multiple albums…and…one example if ‘Hall of Fame’ from The Script..which I probably have encountered a number of different versions.]

Fortunately this was about the time I realised that each entry could be all sorts of different things --- and what I could focus on is the journey of how I ended up finding a track (and in some cases a whole new YouTube channel with tracks I can't wait to listen to). Kind of like if you and I were catching up at a cafe and I was giving you an update that included music I was listening to.

I did worry about sharing things that were off topic and learned that as long as it had links to the narrative...it would be okay. And it did turn out okay. :)

Ready to share your discovery story? Here's your official invite!