i recently helped my father build part of the deck he is adding to the back of his house. currently, the back door opens outward to a small, square landing atop 3 stairs, made of concrete and painted a soft dark blue. the stairs descend to a rectangular patio of bare concrete, which hugs the back face of the house for 20 feet or so. this entire area will soon be obscured from view by the deck being built right on top of it. cement block support bases for the deck have been sealed directly to the patio, with vertical wood beams inserted on their top and secured by tar. the beams which lay across the deck either lengthwise or widthwise are secured to the main support beams via brackets. the general foundation for the deck is now laid, with the next step being to attach the final layer of support beams, then add fascia and the final aesthetic/functional layer of "wood," which in our case is actually pvc.

it feels good to have a tangible object you can see and say "i put that together with my hands," even if the project is yet-incomplete. it's similar to the feeling i get when i decide a piece of music is "complete enough" to release to the public for listening, or when i make a piece of art i really feel is something better than what i average. accomplishment.

i added a new step to my music-listening regimen. i listen to music while i work, every week day from around 08:45 to 17:00. typically i use spotify to do this. when i begin work, i open the "what's new" page, which displays music by artists i follow in reverse chronological order (newest at the top) by release date. first, i queue and listen to all the singles released that day. if i like the song, i will add it to an appropriate playlist either by genre or by vibe. if i love the song, i will also "like" it. this method has resulted in a massive collection of music - at time of writing i have 7,482 songs "liked," with countless more on playlists. i use these playlists to listen to music during my non-work hours, when i can't focus on a new album as much as i'd like.

continuing, once i've reached the end of the queue of singles, i listen to each ep (extended play) that is listed for the day. again, i playlist or like any songs i enjoy from the eps (this is usually all of them, because i enjoy the artists i follow). when each ep has been listened to, i move onto the albums released that day. if there was a lot of music released that day (fridays are frequently very "busy"), i choose the order of albums based on my personal desire or like for the artist, as i want to be satisfied with my choices in case i should run out of time for that day's releases. generally, however, i will simply listen to each album released that day, and again, like and playlist each song appropriately.

here is where i had to add a step.

what i have been doing: once i listen to that day's new releases, i open my list of saved albums, a majority of which are not known to me (for the purposes of this process). spotify orders albums "alphabetically" in the following order: symbols, 0-9, a-z, then foreign typefaces with their albums grouped in alphabetical order. i would listen to albums in alphabetical order this way, beginning at the top of the list each day. i would look at the first album on the list (perhaps starting with "/" or "0") that i had not yet listened to, and determine if i was in the mood for that genre. if i was open to it, i would listen to the album, playlist or like the songs if i liked them, and then either remove the album from my list, if i considered it "completed," or keep it on my list if i enjoyed it a lot and would listen to it in full again in the future.

this process of listening to albums in alphabetical order from the top suited me fine, as i have a lot of music from many genres saved, and have still not yet got bored. however, after nearly 5 years of this process, with ever more music being released every day, i am hardly through the a's of my list. i feel i am restricted by my own rule to stuff near the top of my list that i may not always be in the mood to try to listen to, either because the genre is not what i want to hear that day or because the album is longer than i have time for when i reach it (i had no idea how many three-hour-or-longer albums people release).

to remedy this fear of missing out on albums further down my list, and to widen the genres that tend to pop up in my daily listening, i have added the letters of the alphabet to an "albums" calendar on my phone. each day (including weekends) now has a letter assigned to it, a-z, with a 27th day added for albums that begin with a number, symbol, or that are in a foreign language. each calendar event is set to repeat every 27 days, so that when the sequence has been gone through it restarts at "a." this way, each day when i begin listening to releases from my list of saved albums, i can start on a different letter, not from the top, and listen to albums that begin with, say, "e" (today's letter). i realize this may all sound a little ridiculous, but when you are as obsessed with music as i am you need a way to organize your listening and be sure you're getting the most bang for your buck.

gt