The Album-Cover-a-Day Runners Up

            

             You’ve seen the album-cover-a-day challenge on Facebook. Maybe you’ve enjoyed them. Perhaps they annoyed you. You might’ve even participated.

            The rules are that you do it for 10 days and you can’t say anything about the records that the album art represents. No reviews, no nothing.

            A bit of the way into mine, my sister commented that she imagined it might be hard for me to only pick 10, to not review any of them. And she couldn’t’ve been righter. So much so that I’d already been concocting a list of the albums that -- for one reason or another -- didn’t make it in to my top 10.

            No one said you couldn’t make that list and review those albums. So that’s what this post is.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXXII: 225-201

Managed to squeeze another one in before July was in the rear-view.

Eight more of these and you never have to hear me talk about gratitude again.

Or...not that often anyway.

Actually, I'll probably reference this series a lot over the next few years.

So, yeah: Cancel all of that. No promises anywhere.

Thanks for reading, though.

Happy weekend...if you have that sort of thing in your life.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XIX: 550-526

One more post and I'll no longer be able to talk about approaching the halfway point. After that I'm sure I'll reinvent a dozen different ways to refer to the proverbial home stretch.

The publishing of this entry puts me near the five-month mark in terms of the scope of this project and calling it overwhelming would be understatementish.

The hope -- as I begin to chisel away at the second tier -- will be to gain an appreciation of the challenges that others face in their lives, be they intentional or otherwise. I also have noted a bit of a perspective shift with regard to my own thinking and I wish for that to continue to develop.

If you're new to the series, you can find previous installments in the archives, and if you're curious about the impetus for starting it, it's this lady. To be fair, I haven't read what she wrote; I only know of her book through secondary sources, but the idea sounded pretty righteous. You can read a little bit more about her idea here.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part III: 950-926

This is taking much longer than I thought.

Thanks, Obama!

I still have determination, though, and that will get me to at least 700. Everything after that will probably be about the variety of farts and boogers that once dwelled inside my body, but have since been set free into the world. 

It should come as no surprise that it's taken longer than anticipated to crank out three installments considering that it takes me 10 minutes to share a 90-second verbal anecdote.

Anyway...

The idea came from this site, and if I haven't said it already, the motivation in taking this on centers on increased mindfulness, the notion that -- as my wife said today -- "things are pretty good."

I'd like to remember that much more often than I do, and if you've chosen to join me on this journey, I hope that things are pretty good for you, too.

Nine Hundred Fifty: John Lennon

            I never met the man, and I won’t even try to speak to what kind of man he was, but from where I sit, it looks like he was a pretty righteous dude. I also don’t want to over-credit him for The Beatles’ success, but it seemed like a lot of the musical things he touched turned to gold. I don’t know the things that went on in John Lennon’s head. I don’t have a finger on everything he stood for, but from over here it appears that he had a pretty good idea of the way the world ought to operate. Caveat: I’m a giant hippie, so you have to take my opinion with a whole box of kosher salt. It’s interesting to think about whether the world would be any different were he still alive and a bit sad when you consider that -- based on what he symbolized -- it’s not. Anyway, I’m thankful he was around for 40 years. We could use another guy like that.

A Necessary Exercise: Not Oscar's Home, Not Wednesday Night, and Not the Band

            Stephen King says 2,000 words a day. Natalie Goldberg encourages “first thoughts.” Neil Young sings, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

            The blank screen. The white page. Blue skies from pain.

            Erin O’Laughlin manages a life way busier than mine with double the work hours, double the children, yet still adds to her Cornucopia.

            People snap pictures of their backpacked loved ones.

            Two thousand fourteen resembles a relay; August takes the baton, sprinting faster than July, who beat June’s time, who scorched May. Twenty thirteen scoffs; next year licks its proverbial chops.

            I find myself irritated by the new Pandora channels I just started to love. Tweets via SMS invoke ire, especially when smart -- and all of the ones I follow are -- users RT the day away instead of sharing original thought.

            It’s 10:00 on Friday night and I have but bottled enthusiasm for the Kansas City Royals. Another football season looms. Another Dwayne Bowe suspension hangs. Disappointment remains inevitable.

            I haven’t unpacked my basement. My stereo, in pieces, occupies a shelf. Because of that -- and so much more -- I’ve given my son the typical second-child shaft. My job is my car and my car clings to function by wood glue and duct tape.