There are many reasons not to keep a blog. A shortlist includes:

1. Your friends don’t think it is cool.
2. You have to blog about something interesting, and lets face it, you’re not that interesting.
3. Think of all the other things you could be doing with your time. A short sublist includes:
   1. Watching the Simpsons ( I mean, you love the Simpsons!)
   2. Practicing Guitar (you haven’t done that in a while)
   3. Making/Perfecting your Tinder profile (true love awaits)
   4. Taking a nap (you’re tired bro)
4. Its an outdated medium (now its all about the snaps, tweets, blogs, and tizzles bro).
5. Who cares about your blog.

Thank you, self doubt, for that lovely list. Now I’m not going to try to argue against every point on that list, because frankly, some of that is true. But I will take issue with the last item on that list and say this: who cares who cares!!

Yeah I said it. Who cares who cares. If I wanted people to care about what I was saying I’d be tizzling out my Game of Thrones season 8 re-writes. My motivation for writing a blog is not that I want people to care about what I say. Although quick side-note: Of course I do like it when people care about what I say. I’m as addicted to this social-media driven world as everyone else is in 2019. I love those likes, comments, shares, subscriptions, and tizzles. But no, my true reason, is that I find this activity personally rewarding. It isn’t necessarily fun or easy to do — its always easier not to — but I find that I just feel better and live better when this is part of my life. Fundamentally, I do this because I believe that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and this is my way of publicly examining my life. 

Now, basing your actions on something Socrates said might sound like a very freshman-in-college thing to do. And yeah! It is! I first read that quote when I was a literal college freshman taking Intro to Philosophy, and it has stuck with me ever since! But I’d like to take a moment to petition for the idea that most of us could stand to act a little bit more like college freshmen sometimes, and a little less like old floppy-jowled fishy-smelling cynical curmudgeons (I’m looking at you fill in name of hated politician here). Because college freshman have a whole expanse of time, space, and opportunity before them, and from that perspective they are often free to choose to do the right or beautiful thing, rather than just the practical thing. 

Now I’m certainly not saying that it is hopeless for all of us olds (I’m 30— am I allowed to start calling myself old yet? I can’t wait for that day). The good news is that there is in fact a way to recapture this spirit of youth. You could take Lord Henry’s advice from The Picture of Dorian Gray:

“Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to become young again.”

He thought for a moment. “Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?”

“A great many, I fear,” she cried.

“Then commit them over again,” he said gravely. “To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”

Now, granted, this quote comes from a book in which the main character spirals out into an ever-escalating tornado of depraved, immoral acts, so let’s think about reworking this quote a bit shall we?

To get back ones youth, one has merely to reclaim one’s ideals. I know, it is not as sexy as the original quote, but here’s the thing, no one wants to be the grandpa getting sick on the subway from one too many shots of fireball (newsflash: one shot of fireball is too many shots of fireball). That’s a folly that should not be repeated. No. Instead of repeating follies, let’s reclaim our ideals.

So here I am, channeling my inner freshman, and still believing and acting upon things that Plato’s imaginary friend Socrates said. And damn it feels good to be a freshman.

Oh, wait, shit. I forgot this was a music blog. I thought it was a free-form, stream-of-consciousness motivation blog. It sure was this week wasn’t it? Next week I’ll tell you why I’ve been on a blog hiatus. Long story short, I got a job as a producer at a company called Man Made Music, and I’ve had my head down, working hard getting rolling there. There ya go — music stuff!