Instant Inspiration!

If my previous posts give any indication, I've been having a bit of trouble with motivating myself to do anything that isn't watching funny youtube videos and reading lifestyle blogs. With this in mind, I decided to compile a list of things that generally inspire me to think of life more as an adventure and less as a series of mostly uneventful days.

1. Make something. Or in my case, force yourself to make something. Maybe the process will be slightly frustrating, but I promise that the end result will give you a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. For details on the do-it-yourselfing project, see my post on repurposing a box to make it more practical for storing jewelry.

2. Go to the library and check out on a book on a subject that interests you but that you've never examined in any detail. If nothing else, you'll learn something. For me, this was young adult literature, namely the collected works of John Green. I haven't read anything in this genre since I was about 12, so I decided to give it another try, just for fun. And, oh my, has it been fun. I read Paper Towns in one night, completely absorbed in the suspense, humor, and commentary on the nature of human relationships. I look forward to tackling the rest of my books-to-read stack. Right now it's An Abundance of Katherines. Thoroughly enjoyable.

3. Read some newspaper articles to remind yourself that there is lots of stuff going on in the world. There are things that need fixing. This isn't to say that you're going to change the world all at once, but I find it inspiring just to think about one person's potential to fix some societal problem. And, hey, maybe eventually I will devise a plan of action to change something for the better.

4. Listen to this song: "Young Lovers Go Pop!" by This Many Boyfriends. Something about the chorus makes me feel like things are possible. And that is important in the motivation/inspiration game.

5. Caffeine. Lots of it. I had four cups of Irish breakfast tea while writing this post, and, sure, my hands are shaking a bit, but that just makes me type faster. 

6. And if you must watch youtube videos, at least choose something When I watch this type of video, I generally end up thinking, "Look at this guy. He's my age, and he's making artistic, insightful videos on a weekly basis. What am I doing with my life?" Then I go attempt to do something productive. 

The Crookes - Hold Fast: Album Review

It's time for a confession: I often have a hard time listening to albums all the way through. Either I get so caught on one song that it becomes the only one I ever listen to, or I get bored about three songs in and give up on the album entirely.

The Crookes, however, have accomplished an unprecedented feat. They have recorded not one, but two albums that I love all the way through. Now, I could probably talk at length about their first album, Chasing After Ghosts, but for the time being, I'll just say that it captured exactly how I feel about my life at this particular point. Listening to this album,

The merits of Chasing After Ghosts aside, Hold Fast (released on July 9th) has already become such an integral part of my life that I can't imagine a day when I don't listen to this album in its entirety. 10 days in, and I'm not even close to getting bored. Unprecedented.

I'm not going to do a song-by-song breakdown of the album. I'm not going to throw around music reviewer terms, because I'm not a music reviewer. This is one of the few illusions I don't have about myself. So, instead of using traditional music jargon and showing off my advanced (and non-existent) knowledge of musical history, I'm going to steal a reviewing strategy I overheard two hipsters discussing during my college orientation. I am going to describe how this album makes me feel.

From beginning to end, this album makes me at once want to get up and dance and fall into serious reminiscence. And when I say reminiscence, I mean all the best memories of my college days and my probably faulty conception of what the '60s must have been like. In other words, it combines unrelenting energy, strong melodies, and a vintage sound (sorry, I sound so pretentious right now) with lyrics that are somehow both relatable and vague. That's exactly how I like to take my lyrics, because it makes it easier to self-centeredly imagine that the songs were written with my experiences in mind. Anything that helps me perpetuate my delusions is fine by me. Please note that I'm only writing semi-seriously here. Maybe vague, poetic lyrics actually just make it easier to imagine that someone out there has experienced some of the same things as me, that they could relate to some of my less-than-positive emotions. Yeah, that makes me sound nicer, but also like an angsty teenager. I just can't win. 

Sarcasm aside, this album is seriously worth a listen or, you know, hundreds of listens. I may never listen to anything else again.