(not a) 2009 Wrap-Up

Every year since I've had a website/blog (5 years? 7? I'll have to look that up), I've wanted to do a year-end wrap-up. Kind of an all-inclusive post pointing out my highs and lows as far as music, television, movies, and general life. Why haven't I gotten around to doing it? Here are the main reasons:

1) I'm a procrastinator.

Of course I refuse to do this kind of post in December, unlike most movie, music and video game sites with their "Best of 2009/Best of the Decade" lists, most of which came out in early and mid December. I know not that many new projects are listed in December, but it's the principle of the thing.

I also don't want to do the post in February, so I've got a super narrow window of only 30 days to write such a post. Who could do that? Oh, me, if I were on the ball.

2) What are the limits?

All this week I've been thinking about such a post, and what to put on it. This brings up another serious problem--time periods. If I made it a 'Best of 2009" kind of thing, then I would consider it limited to only things released in 2009. If I made it a "Year in Review" thing then that would be a little more broad. For instance, one of the albums I've been listening to the most in 2009 has been Michael Nesmith's "Magnetic South." Kind of country, kind of rock, very mellow and very good. Of course, the album was released in 1970, so I can't quite decide if it's appropriate to include in a 2009 wrap-up.

Ultimately I will include any movie, book, album, whatever, no matter where or when from, so long as I stumbled across or got into them in the year in question, but at the moment it's a little to include all of those works of art into a year-end post because of my third problem.

3) I took lousy notes

Going back to the "Magnetic South" example, it's been out of my rotation for a few months, so I nearly forgot that I discovered it in 2009, and it could very easily not have been on my list, (if I made one, which I didn't).

Don't get me wrong, I take great notes. I worked as a sort of personal assistant for a month at a company before the job they hired me for was ready, and that's a tie with pizza delivery man for best job I've ever had. I got to sit in on meetings, see what goes on with the bigwigs behind closed doors, and all I had to do was take notes and keep them all organized

As far as what I'm watching, reading or listening to, however, I need to keep better track of when. I'm working on getting a database set up. It's easy enough to create a database for all the CDs and DVDs I own, but when I want to start finding a way to, say, enter in a review for every individual episode of a season, or every individual track of an album, it gets a bit tricky.

I know I watched the Wire in 2009. I know I watched all of Farscape in 2009. Did I watch Babylon 5 in 2009 or 2008? Possibly a little of both. Should I include my umpteenth watch through of Angel? It did take up a significant amount of my time, although come to think of it I'm pretty sure my last full viewing was in 2008.

So this post isn't my 2009 wrap-up. Sorry, I know you're all dying to read it. I'm toying with a few ideas, such as doing a twice-a-year wrap up, on my blogiversary (end of July) and at the beginning of the new year. Or perhaps something more frequent even than that, monthly or quarterly. Should give me a nice bit of perspective, and then I have plenty of notes for a huge year-end thing.

I'm sure you can hardly wait.

Till next year,

David