Starting Again

Ok well I haven’t been writing much. I was on a roll with this project and got stopped in my tracks when I couldn’t find Jay-Z’s album free to stream anywhere. Meaning it wasn’t on Spotify.

I get it. Jay’s got his own thing going on, I just don’t want to pay for it and I definitely can’t hear the difference between his supposedly high-fidelity streaming experience and my $10-less-expensive one.

So, instead of trotting along down my path of writing every day and figuring out a way to continue on even when presented with an obstacle, I stopped. For solidly over a week.

It’s a lot harder to start again once you’ve stopped. It was never that hard over the weekend, cause that’s what weekends are. You stop work on Friday and then you muster up the courage Sunday night to wake up again Monday morning and get back to whatever it was you quit Friday. But when you stop for an indefinite amount of time because it’s just a little difficult to keep going, and for no other reason but that slight difficulty, you’re suddenly faced with the difficulty of starting again every single day. And then with the difficulty of dealing with your mean, judgmental self harassing you about getting the fuck back on the wagon already.

Well, I finally secured myself a copy of “4:44” this week, and it still took me two full days to find the discipline to listen to the thing. If you’ll remember, I didn’t super want to. And I really didn’t want to by the time I got home. I’d just gone to Trader Joe’s to stock up on wine and, trying like an a-hole to balance three bottles and a bag of bread and a thing of frozen fried rice in my arms with no basket, I dropped a bottle of wine on the floor at the cash register. Glass and red wine everywhere. I don’t know why I got so pissed at the Trader Joe Hawaiian Shirt Person trying to help me get glass off my shoe, but it was already soaked with red wine and it was her fault I dropped it in the first place. I would explain how it was her fault, except that it wasn’t, but it’s a lot easier to be annoyed at her if I say it was, so here we are!

I hate to do this but I think I’m starting my period so that may explain a lot. Aaanyway.

I finally lugged my groceries upstairs, poured myself a large glass of the finest Charles Shaw Cabernet and plopped down on the couch to listen to some Jay-Z.

I won’t act like I listened to it with all the attention required of a rap album, but I did like it fine. Better than any other Jay-Z album I’ve tried to listen to, that’s for sure. There were some dope beats. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit on the couch and have someone talk rhythmically at me about things I probably need to hear over a dope beat.

I’m back in. I have 11 more albums to listen to and only 15 days in Dallas before I start my PCT thru hike. I feel restless. I probably need this music.