2023! A new year!
I like the idea of setting intentions at new year, although these are often soon discarded without much thought. That’s fine. Take this as a reflection of where my head is when 2022 comes to a close, rather than a set of promises I’m holding myself to.
New Music
Spotify Unwrapped is a clever trick, a sort of Barnum Effect that makes everyone feel that their musical tastes are excellent. My own 2022 Spotify Unwrapped was disappointing. It was very similar to 2021, with two songs appearing in both top tens, and most of the songs being old. Only one record from 2022 (Zheani’s Napalm) was in the latest top ten.
Spotify gives me access to the greatest database of music in history – it’s basically magic – and I’ve been using it to listen to records that came out 30 years ago. I’d like to find new things that I love as much as the things I played on CD as a teenager. I’ve even started to explore using Spotify API to discover new music.
Reading
I will be reading a lot less in 2023 than I did in 2022, when I was consuming a couple of books most weeks. I’m not someone who needs reading goals and projects, but I do want to do a little more re-reading in the coming year. As I unpack my library into a new home, I find myself wondering if the copies of books I’ve transported to so many different places are as great as I remember them being.
I want to go back to some of these personal classics and see what I think of them years later. It will be fascinating to measure books like House of Leaves, Girlfriend in a Coma and, um, American Psycho against the person that I am now.
Writing
I wrote a longer post about this a few days ago. I will be focussing less on submissions this year and more on self-publishing zines. My recent investigations into ARGs has also got me interested in what experiments I can do.
Travelling
I’ve mostly stayed close to home in the last year, but made some long drives for short trips – to Brighton overnight for a Rosy party, to Stratford-Upon-Avon to brunch with Tom, and to the midlands for a couple of hours of a bonfire. Interesting that the short trips with long drives stick in the memory so much, and I should make more of them – which means dealing with my nervousness about driving. It would also be good to visit some of the interesting places around my new home. I’ve also been meaning to visit both Liverpool and Sheffield for the last year, and need to get on with that.