When my life is up in the air, I create projects for myself. These projects anchor me, make me feel like I have something to do, that I am actually contributing
something (even if it isn't a pay cheque). Sometimes these projects benefit everyone in my house - like the
kitchen makeover. But most often, the only one who really gives a crap about the list of things I want to accomplish is me. That doesn't mean these little projects aren't equally important. In fact, as most wise men will tell you, a happy wife/mom means a happy household.
Instead of tackling the rest of my house (which as it turns out, also needs a makeover), I have been working on moving my cd collection into iTunes. For many this wouldn't take all that long to complete. For me, this will probably take a while (even if I continue to diligently slug it out on a daily basis). I have a large cd collection. Not large by a lot of my musician friends' standards, but huge by what the vast majority of you would consider reasonable.
42 gigabytes is pretty impressive considering I've only been at this round of uploading for 10 days. Sad story - this is the 2nd time I have started this project. 20 gigs into the 1st attempt, my brand new iomega hard drive died on me. After a bit of research, I decided to go with the
LaCie Rugged 500GB External Hard Drive. It has a terrific rep, and it comes with a funky orange case protector. I probably have about 100GB of music left to import, and yes, the task is daunting.
I started buying cds when I was in high school, and I have kept almost every one. That's 20+ years of music to relive. I wonder what I was thinking when I bought some of it (Vanessa Williams??) and I laugh as I play Notorious B.I.G. and dance in my kitchen, enjoying is as much today as the first time I listened to it. My collection ranges from local Toronto musicians to Arthur Rubinstein playing Chopin's Mazurkas. There are some cds that I know so well, I can hear the next song start before the current one ends, and there are others that I bought only for the sake of checking out one tune and never bothered with the rest of the recording.
It's fun making play lists of songs to drive to, workout to, kitchen dance to, get busy to. And it's interesting taking a look at the past 20 years as it relates to my developing musical tastes. I'd like to say I've come a long way, but the last song I bought off iTunes was "
No Air" by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown (hey, I'm not proud). Sure I own a fair bit of Keith Jarret, Bill Evans and Shirley Horn, but in my heart, my favourite music is stuff I probably shouldn't play in front of my kids. Sorry Snoop, Foxy, B.I.G., and Lil' Kim - you and me, we're going to have to keep it on the DL for a bit - but you'll always have my heart.