Living on borrowed titles.

At the end of 2018 I was in a pretty good place, albeit after a rough season. At the beginning of 2019 I also walked into a pretty good balance of brain chemicals (detailed somewhat in the finale of my 3-part “Clearer” series earlier this year) and the result has been wholly transformative.

This post is called “Time Out of Mind” because that is what 2019 represented for me: more time spent out here and less time spent in there. This looked like me changing teams at work and taking on more mentoring roles, taking a few international business trips, traveling more, going to more shows, emailing friends… the list goes on. For the first time since moving to New York City I was able to breathe.

Jackson BrowneJackson Browne

Oh yeah, I'm engagedOh yeah, I’m engaged

Harry and the PottersHarry and the Potters

In the past I’ve spent a lot of time waxing nostalgic about my “old” life and marveling about how I’ve come from point A to point B but I’m not sure I’m at that point anymore. Nevertheless, since the decade1 is coming to a close, I thought I’d take a look at where I was 10 years ago:

  • High School Sophomore (no driver’s license yet – I wouldn’t get that until January 15th)
  • Working on a side project: a “Pokemon-style” RPG that never went anywhere (but was a great learning experience)
  • Still a Homestar Runner fan

Maybe not as illuminating as one would hope.

Now that I’m 26 and finally feeling a little bit like an adult, one thing that is becoming very apparent to me is that I don’t have to spend time on things that don’t make me happy. It’s not like I’m hyper-efficient lifestyle min/maxer, but let’s face it, we all have a mental backlog of garbage-that-we-need-to-get-to- someday-but-is-mostly-unimportant and I’m trying to cut that out of my life where I can. I’m not very good at it, but, we’ll say that’s my resolution for the year.

That’s what this year’s retrospective playlist is about. Unlike last year, I did actually curate and rearrange this one a little bit to conform to the “would fit on a CD” requirement I make for myself. Like last year, however, not all the tracks I had on repeat are available on Spotify, but I am going to exclude those this year. Let’s just say that compiling all of that takes time and in keeping with the previous paragraph, I have other stuff to do.

2019: Time Out of Mind (Spotify)

  • “A New England” – Billy Bragg (Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy)
  • “86 the Mayo (Live)” – Vic Ruggiero (Live in Ypsilanti 1/9/9)
  • “I Got Kinda Lost” – Big Star (Live At Lafayette’s Music Room-Memphis, TN)
  • “I’m Always in Love” – Wilco (Summerteeth)
  • “Visions” – Eagles (One of These Nights)
  • “Studebaker” – Warren Zevon (Preludes)
  • “Running on Empty” – Jackson Browne (Running On Empty)
  • “Free Money” – Patti Smith (Horses)
  • “Overkill” – Motörhead (Overkill)
  • “Midnight Rambler” – The Rolling Stones (Let It Bleed)
  • “Runaway Wind” – Paul Westerberg (14 Songs)
  • “Every Picture Tells A Story” – Rod Stewart (Every Picture Tells A Story)
  • “Ways To Be Wicked” – Lone Justice (Lone Justice)
  • “Positively 4th Street” – X (4th Of July / Positively 4th Street [Digital 45])
  • “Busload of Faith” – Lou Reed (New York)
  • “Livin’ in a Mirror” – Harry and the Potters (A Wizardly Christmas of Wizardry)

And, for all you die-hard Mitchell purists out there, here is my unedited list I compiled throughout the year.

  1. Were people2 this upset about the whole “the-decade-doesn’t-actually-end-now” thing in 2010?
  2. People == The Internet