Pysäkki

(The Third Man, 1950; Finnish for "a stop")

Hello. It has been a while since I posted on here.

That is due to several factors - general lethargy, this being an inferior outlet to WordPress, excessive listening to Rich Gang's "War Ready" - but the majority reason of this is that my work at my media blog, In Appreciation Of, is not only something I really have enjoyed doing, but has also begun to accumulate a decent-enough viewership (about 53% more last month than this blog has averaged over its course of time). 

I am currently in my penultimate semester at the University of Tennessee, and if there is one thing I have learned in college, it's to pick something you enjoy doing and do that thing as long as you can mine it for what it's worth. I enjoy writing. I enjoy writing about media, and I enjoy writing as a marketer, proposer, and a quasi-socialite. I enjoy the business side of things. I enjoy a keyboard, a Kinks album, and a steady supply of water and fried chicken.

This past few months, I have realized something else: I never particularly enjoyed writing about Will.

It's nothing personal - I kind of like me, and the self-confidence issue I've had since birth is not quite as much of a problem now. It's just that writing about my own personal life is boring.

Why should I write about myself when I have the ability to tell stories that are much greater?

I stopped wanting to write about myself sometime in the spring, when I realized that I loved writing and hated trying to come up with descriptions about how my life was going. I don't need to tell you my story in a different way twice a month. I love Jesus, but trying to figure out what he was trying to tell me every two weeks was exhausting. I don't feel that that's what I'm here to do.

That's why writing about music for the last four months has made me feel much more positive about myself and my ability to write. Music is, after all, a gift from God. Each Psalm is a song. Exodus 15 records Moses and company as singing "a song of victory." Joshua 6 describes the walls of Jericho falling, soundtracked by trumpets.

Describing others' accomplishments for four months has given me a greater appreciation (no pun) for what the human mind can accomplish with its natural and spiritual gifts. Humans are deeply flawed individuals who come together to create harmonic productions that simply cannot be done without a greater hand.

In Appreciation Of has grown into an outlet where I am able to appreciate those accomplishments each week, and, for whatever reason, it has received very favorable reviews thus far. I am very grateful for every view of my writing I receive, because the patience one has to sit through arbitrary lists and rankings and Tim Hecker fawning is rather difficult.

In the year 2014, I have been approved to graduate from a world-famous university, become involved in a college-centered Bible study at a church, started and continued a relationship with a wonderful woman, eaten lots of food, lost and gained ten pounds, and got new glasses. Those are the essential facts, and writing more than that feels like a waste of space. There are better stories to tell, and I'm interested in hearing them and relaying them.

I do not know where I will be sitting and typing next October 3rd. It doesn't matter. What matters is the stories of others that have happened and will happen between now and next year.

Good night, and good luck. Enjoy, love, and appreciate your own renaissances. Don't think twice, it's all right.

Will

Japanese to English

(2001's The Royal Tenenbaums; Red House Painters)

Henry James' The Real Thing is a short story about a painter who hires out a far-past-their-prime couple to model for his work. The Monarchs, unable to fulfill the painter's needs appropriately, end up damaging his work on a long-term basis, while a lower-class couple encompasses the painter's ideas more accurately. In short, the painter chases what he considers to be the real thing at face value without exploring for deeper meaning, permanently altering his career, work, and stories.

There comes a point in time where a person has to stop, consider their work, and ask themselves, "what am I chasing?" The idea of the real thing as an attainable goal of a job/monetary success/happy family/other values is flimsy, even as a generic concept. Meg Jay's The Defining Decade encounters the lives of several twenty-something individuals, walking the reader through stories that many of us who are in college, graduated, or just starting out can identify and feel with.

Jay presents the idea of chasing your dreams as your own personal real thing, using job searching as her category in one quote: “Do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that's an investment in who you might want to be next.” Essentially, we shouldn't be chasing whatever we can find in the manner of a younger dog playing with a chew toy until it has shredded it more than the Spurs offense shreds opponents, ready to move onto the next one. Working at Starbucks or Kroger helps in a monetary sense for a short period of time, but job-hopping adds nothing to one's résumé, only making the waters murkier while making your own advancement more difficult.

The most depressing thought a person can encounter is the idea of putting in hard work and large amounts of time, only to realize that these efforts may have ended up being a march towards futility. I don't consider my work with education to be anything in that light - my dear mother went the same path as I, getting a teaching license, although never using it - but it's a thought that entered my head while on vacation and I can't figure out how to let it escape.

Over the last two weeks, I've struggled a lot with figuring out my own path in life. The idea of false-starting over and over as if time were indeed a flat circle is something all too familiar to a 20-year-old three major changes in and still as lost as ever. The thought of the college experience being a thinly-veiled monetary scam is one for another time, but part of me continues to wonder if I've found the right road yet.

I still consider education to be a path of priority, along with continuing to plan on interviewing in November to enter the program at the University of Tennessee. For the first time, though, I find myself opening my eyes to other available paths that suddenly look quite attractive and enjoyable - business, finance, marketing, etc. Decade answers several questions I had had previously about the job market, such as "will employers still hire me if my degree seemingly has no relation whatsoever to the job?" (Answer: yes. Businesses of all sizes are a diverse workplace and need a large variety of skills to operate with efficiency.)

My biggest worry upon writing this is that friends, relatives, and my poor mother will read this and see it as a final suicide note to a path that I had considered worth the adversity for some time. It isn't that, exactly; it's more of looking at the idea of reopening your commitment. As a collegian and follower of several different sports, the idea of recruitment and commitment and something I've encountered and will continue to encounter for a long time. Comforting, for the most part.

Will

Writing is fun. Keep updated with my other work at In Appreciation Of.

Positive Vibrations

(FX's Louie; the Soft Boys)

I have several issues that I'm trying to either resolve completely or resolve to myself at the moment (including the excessive use of "I" to start off posts). A few are certain inabilities that are in extreme need to be corrected in some capacity - my struggle to finish any project or work I embark on at a reasonable rate, my internal necessity to put every pressure and stress inducing-idea I can think of on myself at one time, etc. - but it takes time and space to do this, along with realizing that some issues you have with yourself cannot be fixed, and one has to be at peace with that idea.

I talked a couple of weeks ago about getting older and the newfound struggles it brings, along with the new discovery of ideas of growing up and accepting more responsibilities that causes an immediate struggle between heart and brain. As humans, we have an innate need to satisfy our heart, and the idea of only being able to successfully fill either the heart or brain's needs without keeping both happy is a struggle that few of us have embraced and succeeded against at this point in our lives, unless you're reading this and are not a twenty-something who can't seem to dig out the answers like you were able to before new pressures arose.

The most enjoyable pastime for me this summer has been one that I found to be a common thread between my youth and my time as an adult: listening to, and reviewing, the ever-increasing and ever-diversifying (although at a slower rate than ever before, seemingly) world of music. The 400 album project is over 20% done, which makes it one of the best and more timely progressions I've made in years, the other being cohesively determining this to be the greatest review of any album ever written.

My mother sends me encouraging emails sometimes and she'd probably be a little bit upset if I were to share the ever-so private contents of those, but this week's encouraging email was a little different than most. Enclosed were words that attended the most urgent of matters to my mental health and were more helpful than ever before, and I found myself satisfied heart-wise. However, to satisfy my brain as well, I'll need to return, re-read the email a few times, research the general ideas of improvement, apply them, and then analyze to see if they've improved my own mental health. Writing this made it easy enough for me to see why I focus so much on helping my heart while ignoring the necessities of my head.

Most of this has been written at the extremely productive and intelligent thought-inducing hour of 1 AM with the impending doom of waking up in less than seven hours to attend to the mostly heart-based needs of children that finished preschool more recently than you finished watching Fargo. My intent for these posts is for them to be the vaguely cohesive-sounding thoughts of someone growing up, finding the fun in being serious, and understanding the appeal in not leaving your apartment because you can't leave a book like Shotgun Lovesongs. Sometimes you need to be at peace with who you need to be in that moment, and if not, you'll get there eventually. Yeezy season approaching.

• In Appreciation Of launched this week, with my friends Harrison and Brian making several contributions. Check us out and follow us on Twitter at @IPOblog.
• My first project is to do a musical review of the first few months of 2014, which should be a fairly easy thing to do, considering the speed of high-quality releases in 2014 has sputtered along at the pace of a '95 Geo. The long-term project: the top 10 albums of every year of my life from 1993 to 2014, once a week for 22 weeks. That will be starting on June 9th, while at the beach. This is also a terrible idea that you should read.
• Summer projects update: music (83/400), film (8/100), TV (3/50), books (6/25). Welp.
• Speaking of Shotgun Lovesongs, it's the best novel of 2014 thus far (although I'll be reading The Invention of Wings in Florida next week to see if it takes the title). If you like small-town America and musicians that are very obviously inspired by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, you should check it out immediately.
• Best eat of the month: hot whiting filet with white bread, pickles, baked beans, and sweet corn at Bolton's Spicy Chicken and Fish in East Nashville. 8.7/10.
• FREE MUSIC FRIDAY, from JL and I: "Big Whip."

I was maimed by rock and roll,

W. E. Warren

A Life of Possibilities

(1979's Manhattan; the Dismemberment Plan)

One of the hardest realizations of growing older - that is, hitting your senior year in college and entering your first mid-mid-life crisis - is that you aren't special at very many things. I came to terms with this a while ago, but the realization of being exceptionally good at a very slight few things, none of which are focusing on any one activity ever, is kind of disappointing in some way.

The categories/things that I consider myself to have legitimately exceptional abilities and potential in are not that important to my future (for instance, my ability to listen to music, analyze it for deeper meaning, and form an opinion rapidly and fluently is nice to have, but can I use that in a classroom?), but they do open doors in some fashion. Regardless, being in a season of change and realizing that you aren't the smartest one in the room is a challenge.

My parents have done an amazing job over the last few months of preparing me for the idea of post-college, a world where it becomes increasingly likely day by day that I won't immediately have a job in the field that I want a job in. Working in an office isn't the worst thing ever, either; there are plenty of opportunities for me to succeed in that environment. Life is so much more than my career, however; life represents a wild, colorful field full of possibilities, open doors, and an immeasurable amount of daily opportunities. To explore these opportunities, I have to first realize the innate self-worth deep inside me.

On a personal level, the amount of daily struggles I face in finding self-importance is high, and it fluctuates along with my mood. It took 20+ years to understand that bipolar disorder is a very real thing and that I'm affected with it and by it. If nothing else, I finally have an answer for why my moods can change quickly and why depression and anxiety have been such a large part of my life for so long.

The biggest challenge and struggle in finding self-importance is realizing your own self-importance, in that you, as a person, were created to make an impact in others' lives. It's hard to realize this from time to time (especially in high school, where the amount of real, legitimate friends I had by the end of my junior year was in single digits), but we are here for a reason. Far too often, I take this idea for granted, because there are days when I feel like the smallest cog in the grand machine. How could I possibly affect lives on a large scale? Is what I'm doing important? Am I important?

The answer to all of these is quite simple, even if I have trouble believing it some days: of course I'm important. Of course what I'm doing is important. Potentially, whether through teaching or a different type of work, I can affect lives on a greater scale than in a small room of smaller people. Does it take me longer to realize this than it probably does for you? Probably. However, I have been given the opportunity to seek a life of possibilities; it is my choice to seek out mine and your choice to find yours. 

• I have now reached the "college angst" portion of my life, where some of my best friends are moving away and I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Chances are that you, too, will go through this at some point if you are my age or younger. Along with praying on it, which is my recommended action for those who see prayer as important as I do, two albums that I love madly and deeply that speak eloquently on this subject are Emergency & I by the Dismemberment Plan, along with the Meadowlands by the Wrens. Both of these albums are on Spotify.
• In Appreciation Of goes live this week with a few different posts: an introduction, an essential albums list, and everything I found wrong with The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I plan on posting there more frequently than I will on here, simply because writing is an effective outlet of my free time and I'd love to do it as much as possible if you're willing to read.
• Go follow @YJTmusic on Twitter. JL and I will be posting more stuff this week. Expect more releases this summer, because we'll both have a fair amount of free time, for the most part.
• I plan on listening to at least 400 albums for the first time this summer. I'm at 20 now. This will go until the end of August. Keep up with my progress here on RateYourMusic, where I'll be rating each one.
• A shortlist of projects for the summer: 400 albums (21/400 done), 100 movies (5/100), 50 seasons of TV (2/50), 25 books (1/25). Maybe we'll just extend this to the rest of the year.

My mind is filled with radio cures,

Will

American Weekend

(2002's Punch-Drunk Love; song)

Think about how this semester has gone for you. If you were asked to describe it in a few words, what would you describe it as? (Forever and always "This Boy is Exhausted" by the Wrens.) Would you look back on how your schedule was the schedule from hell or how you met many new people, forged new friendships, saw your two most important relationships become deeper and stronger, and overall felt like you had improved on your fall semester in many a way?

That's how I'm choosing to look back on the toughest semester of my life. Combining 19 hours of classes with working part-time, doing ministry work, and trying to cobble together something vaguely resembling a social life while juggling many other things I like to do was never going to work altogether, and it wasn't long before I felt like I was being forced to drop something.

My social presence went away first. While it wasn't very tragic because I'm an introvert and there are some days where other people are a major annoyance, it was still unfortunate, because I do like seeing people that I don't see every day. Writing letters is one of my best forms of communication, but it isn't very realistic to be doing that during the school year. (Also, Facebook messaging is, but I was embarrassed to admit it let's forget I ever wrote this run-on sentence.)

As the semester ran on, I saw my commitments dwindling and my stress level increasing. I failed to set up consistent discipleship times with the people I lead Bible study with this semester and I've felt terrible about it for months. I went weeks without speaking to some of my best friends. I knew that it would end, but I felt wrapped up in the greater mystery of finals week and what impact it would have on my grades. It was impossible to remove myself from my academic work.

While it has indeed been great for my productivity and efficiency levels (they've never been higher), I've had a lot of trouble in rejoicing in the Lord at times this semester. It has indeed been hard, but I took some time this morning to think about things that Jesus has blessed me with this semester, and as always, it was way more than I could remember or ever imagine.

He gave me opportunities to meet new people that I consider really wonderful people over the last couple of months. He's blessed me with the ability to play basketball (decently!) for most weekdays over the last few weeks. I have been given the opportunity to work with Sacred Heart's summer camp after a previous opportunity fell through, which I attribute to Him, as always.

It's been a wild and weird semester, and I want to thank anyone reading this for taking the journey with me, either through text or in person. Thanks to everyone for the most memorable four months of my life, and I hope I'm still here to get to do it all over again in August. I'll have consistent updates throughout the summer, and hopefully my life is still occasionally entertaining enough to write about it.

• I don't have some sort of phenomenal opening sentence, because it's hard for me to jump around a really fun fact for very long: I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform on Saturday. It was one of the greatest three-hour experiences that I'll ever have in life and I would gladly do it all over again, especially outdoors in a city I've completely come around on in the last year in Atlanta. I'll go more in-depth on the show on my other blog soon, but just know that it was pretty freaking incredible.
• Because the rate of good new releases in the music world has slowed down this year (barring a better/more notable back half of the year, this is shaping up to be two straight "meh" musical years with a couple great albums and nothing more. Come through for me, Swans!), this month's playlist is made up entirely of songs that are from 2010 or earlier (the last great year in music). A lot of it is older stuff that I listened to a lot in high school and recently revisited/wanted to make sure they were known by more people I associate with. Here is your May playlist.
• I've finally decided what I would like to write on/"appreciate" for my other site, In Appreciation Of. It's a sort of revisionist history in terms of looking back on recent years and determining what the real best releases were from those years after I've had substantial time to revisit albums I had distinct first opinions on. Unfortunately, it's finals time and I have six exams, so this will take a while to do. Expect something to be posted within two weeks. I'm forcing myself to leave room for error. This is really embarrassing.
• I haven't had time to watch very many films from 2014, but I feel safe in saying that Under the Skin is your winner so far. I'm only recommending this to people that I know are fine with films that require deep thought. If not, stay away. If so, hurry up and see it.
• This is a work in progress, but I'll throw it at you anyway. There's but a week left in finals and summer is on the horizon. Here's a playlist to celebrate with some of my favorite summer-tinged recordings.
• I have six exams over the next week. If you need to get in touch with me, I likely won't be responding in a manner as efficient as I would like, so this is my apology.

That illiterate light is with us every night,

Will

Lights Out

(1984's Paris, Texas; song here)

(this post includes a long feature on twenty albums that have shaped my life in some way; that list can be found after the page break)

If there has been one discovery I've made during this learning experience of a semester, it's that there's only so many things in life you can truly enjoy. It's important to stop, take time to enjoy those things, and realize that you're in a pretty lucky position to be able to enjoy what you love just by being alive in that very moment on this planet.

To the surprise of exactly no one ever, I was playing basketball yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon. If you know me at all, you know that basketball is perhaps my favorite activity in this world other than eating, and it's something I enjoy with a deep and fierce passion. It's an outlet for me to work off frustration and then realize that I'm still having fun playing a sport I love.

After finishing up by making a few last shots, I took time to sit down on the back of my car and look out at what surrounded me. The place that I play at is in the middle of Fort Sanders, surrounded by concrete hospitals and deteriorating houses that haven't been renovated in decades. It's not the most beautiful place for a person to enjoy the sights, but sometimes you have to adjust your settings to get the highest amount of happiness out of it.

As I sat down, I started thinking about how utterly insane it was that God was allowing me to do more than a few things Wednesday afternoon. Despite how flawed I am, God loves me (and you!) enough to give me the ability to breathe, to run, to shoot, to see, to love, to feel, and to do so many things in life that I completely don't deserve to do. After blowing my own mind for a minute, I realized again that the best thing I can do in life is bring glory to someone who gives me the opportunity every day to do an incredible range of things despite doing nothing on my own end to deserve these abilities. God is pretty great, you guys.

Be Good

(2013's Her; song here)


(side note: I was asked to write something this week, so here it is. I'll have something better up soon.)

This week, I was advised twice by two different people at UT for two different focuses of my studies. One was from a Secondary Education adviser, telling me what steps to take and how to get to the point where I can achieve my aspirations of being a middle/high school English teacher. The other: my English adviser, who did two nice things in telling me to keep pushing forward and by clicking a button to make me eligible to register for classes.

Nothing about the previous paragraph is notable, except for the fact that advising seems to have parallels with other important stretches of life: I come into places expecting/hoping to get in and out quickly, but end up asking every question that could possibly come to mind at that moment to ensure that I'm covered. I've been seeing that occur lately in life with my walk with Christ, my living situation, and much more.

Recently, I had to figure out where I was living for my senior year of college. Very rarely was the idea of finding somewhere to live a stressful situation for me, because I've typically had an idea of where I wanted to live and who I wanted to be with. However, I woke up on Monday without a home for my final undergraduate year and without much positivity or hope for the situation.

On Sunday night, I learned that I'd have to find alternate plans for next year. I would like to say that I'm at the stage of life where I can deal with things like this pretty rationally, but from time to time it doesn't work that way. I frantically tried to get in touch with everyone I knew that didn't already have a steady living situation. For the first time in a long time, I felt truly lost as to what to do.

"Let go and let God" is a saying I've heard many times in my life about anxieties/worries and your relationship with the Lord, but I had never really experienced it until now. For a long time, I had a position of being willing to let him control some things, but I was never able to truly reconcile the idea of giving up my control of my own life. Efficiency is an extremely important thing to me and when I was unable to find an immediate answer to my problem, I had to let go and understand that God had control of what was happening to me.

The situation resolved itself on Monday night, but God showed me in a really powerful way what happens when he's in control of my life. When I finally accepted about midway through Monday that God was going to put me wherever he saw fit, I felt much more relaxed and much less nervous about senior year. I went to the park. I played basketball. (I also played the best basketball of my life, maybe. Tennessee's Doug McDermott. Or at least Steven Pearl.) I felt happier than I had felt in months. Cool things happen when you stop forcing yourself to control and let someone who knows more than you take care of it.

• My CRU playlists haven't been in high demand lately; however, lucky you, I'm dropping TWO NEW ONES today. One is a playlist for April, the other the ten best songs of 2014 (so far, in ascending order).
• Continuing on music, here is the official List of Recommended 2014 Albums (So Far):
• The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
• Sun Kil Moon, Benji
• Real Estate, Atlas
• Cloud Nothings, Here and Nowhere Else
• St. Vincent, St. Vincent
• Frankie Cosmos, Zentropy
• Future Islands, Singles
• Review of NCAA Tournament predictions made on this blog: Michigan to Elite 8 (yes), Tennessee to Round of 32 (underestimation! Then again, I didn't expect a game against Mercer), and Florida to win the title (still in play; likely winner).
• We're at the point of the year where the weather is fantastic for a couple weeks and then it becomes hotter than the hottest of hot chicken, so if you like basketball and friends, let me know if you would like to play at THE Fort Sanders Educational Development Center anytime soon.
• Public Shaming Weight Update: since deciding to limit the amount of soft drinks I partake in on March 5 (I'm down to one per week), I've dropped five pounds to 165, which is halfway to my goal of 160. This bullet serves no purpose other than reminding myself to finish the job/win the game/etc.
• In Appreciation Of... will be starting next week. It's been a rough time with creativity/scheduling recently, so the project should get off the ground soon enough. It'll be in full bloom after early May.
• Current project: I did a 20 at 20 for individual songs earlier this year. I'll be unveiling the 20 for 20: Album Edition with the next blog I post on here.
• Currently reading: Baja Oklahoma, by Dan Jenkins.

Where the sun doesn't come down,

Will