It's late in the day

This weekend, in one of those sudden and annoying anxiety attacks, I realized that I really should get a move on with the packing if I was going to move my stuff efficiently and quickly in a couple of weeks. But as I so often do, I showed myself where my priorities lie, using the weekend time to weed out those CDs that I've needed to sell for ages. No boxes have been packed, no clothes thrown out, and no practical preparations have been made for my move, but I am finally getting rid of that Letters To Cleo CD that's been hogging space and gathering dust for a decade.

And so I hate to bring up a conversation that feels both vibrant and tired, but this new-fangled age of digital music is really the age for me. While I've been hit hard with the nostalgia stick more than a few times over the last three days (oh, the emotions some of those albums covers can stir up!), I'm sticking to my resolve and getting rid of those albums that I either might want to listen to again someday, or loved once upon a time, but haven't listened to in years only because I can have my cake and eat it, too. I can get rid of about 200 CDs, gaining both space and cash in the process, yet still have the music to listen to. Sure, I'll miss out on the tactile sense of opening up the CD cover and reading along to the lyrics whilst listening to the music (take that, Jarvis!) and seeing some of those amazing album covers (Ming and FS's Hell's Kitchen and DJ Shadow's The Private Press were especially painful to sentence to death), but it's not as important to me as it is to other people. In fact, having Supergrass's In It For the Money on my computer makes it a LOT more likely that I'll listen to it, something I haven't done since about a month after it came out.

But it's been a chore and a half. It's been a constant obsession of getting another CD in the drive and getting this massive stack ripped and sold. Plus, my Never Played playlist has now grown back to over 1500 songs, and unlike when I first started the Never Played campaign, when it was all favorite CDs and new albums that I'd bought but not listened to yet, this time, it's all stuff that I haven't heard in years, and sometimes, albums that I'd only heard once ages ago. That's going to be some strange, strange listening.

If any Friends of Areseven are in the neighborhood in the next week or so, stop by and take a look at the To Be Released Into the Wild pile and give some neglected CDs a good home. And I said friends.