My Brain's "Memory" is Overloaded

Here's the problem with the world.  There's too much.  Too much what?  Too much of everything.  Too many books, too many audiobooks, too many movies, too many TV shows, too many podcasts, too many blogs, too many foods, too many songs, too many magazines, too many phones, too many apps, too many coffees, too many jokes, too many twitter accounts, too many tumblr's, too many bars, too many drinks, too many instagrams, too many flavors, and I could go on FOR-EV-ER.

What I means by Brain's memory, I mean like a computer's memory.  When you are doing too many things at once, your computer gets slow and can sometimes just shut down.  When I find myself getting caught up in too many things, my brain just needs to shut down and forget about a couple of things.

As I sit here, I am listening to one of the 20(!) podcasts that I listen to.  It's the Grantland Sports podcast with Jalen Rose, Dave Jacoby, and Bill Simmons.  I have 32 podcasts on my ipod that are unlistened to.  Let's see what else I have too many things of in my life:

Books I intend on reading: Inferno, Mark Twain, Jack London, Bukowski, George Pelecanos, Chuck Palahniuk's new book (whenever it comes out), Writing for Profit and Fun by Thomas Lennon, Steve Martin's book, Rodney Dangerfield's book, All The Rave: Inside Napster, Four Hour Chef, most of the Hunter S. Thompson books I own besides Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in LV, Great Shark Hunt, Everything is Perfect When You're a Liar, The How of Happiness (among other self help books), Save the Cat!, Don Winslow's books, David Thorne's two books, Pat Riley's Book, Jackie MacMullin's "When The Game Was Ours", Shaq's book, Phil Jackson's book (whenever it comes out), Chuck Klosterman's books, Patton Oswalt's book, The Steve Jobs book, whatever audiobooks are on my iPod that haven't listed yet and some of Neal Stephenson's books.  I didn't count, but that's about 3 years of just reading for me.  Just if I stopped and began reading, that would be so many god damned hours of reading.  I love audiobooks because it scales down reading from days and weeks to hours.

Movies to watch: I scaled it down from 140 movies and TV shows to 36 movies and 24 TV shows.  Most of the TV shows are British TV shows, whose seasons are usually 6 episodes long.  So, 60 movies/TV shows NOT INCLUDING what is currently on TV that I watch.  So you can add about 3-4 hours per week of TV to those numbers.

Twitter Accounts I follow: I recently scaled it down from 500 twitter followers to about 350.  If people are reading this and are finding out I don't follow them anymore (friends, etc.) it's because I don't find enjoyment from your tweets, intellectually or comically.  Following twitter accounts and keeping up with the trends can take endless ours of my life.

Places to Eat: Every new place in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville that are trendy and delicious.  I think according to my Thrillist, there are about 200 restaurants that I have not been to, but have probably showed some interest in going to.  Eating at these places would probably take about an hour, maybe a half an hour if I was lucky.

Podcasts: Adam Carolla Podcast: 90-100 minutes episodes every week day, Adam and Dr. Drew podcast: 60 minutes twice/three times a week, Nerdist: 60 minutes maybe twice a week, This American Life podcast: 60 minutes a week, Girl on Guy podcast: 90-120 minutes once a week, Aoki's House: 1 hour per week, Basketball Jones Podcast: 40-60 minutes every week day, Dave Ramsey podcast: 40 minutes per day, Dada Life: 60 minutes per month, Dr. Drew podcast: 60 minutes twice a week, Baseball Tonight Podcast: 40 minutes per week day, Bill Simmons' B.S. report: 60 minutes 2-3 times a week, Film Vault: 90 minutes once a week, Dyro Podcast: 60 minutes a week, Tiesto podcast: 60 minutes a week, Hardwell podcast: 60 minutes a week, Grantland Sports podcast: 40-60 minutes 3 times a week, ARIYNBF (look it up): Total 150 minutes a week in 2 podcasts, the White Panda's panda waves: 60 minutes per month, Bill Maher's podcast: 70 minutes a week.  And that's it.  That is so much listening to do in a month.  It's overwhelming, but I enjoy every one of those podcasts.  I need to scale down those podcasts even further to get to the music portion of my ipod.

Magazines: Wired, GQ, and I still get ESPN magazine even though I'm not paying for it anymore.

This is what I mean: I get too engulfed in consuming media that I forget to sit down and create for myself.  I'm happy that I got into gardening because it will literally produce something over time and won't just give me a headache after all the time I spend on it.  The time it took me to write all of those out and figure out what each of those will suck out of my life is about 90 minutes.  I listened to 2 podcasts in that time.  That's gross.

Want to know what's even the worst part?  I haven't even put in the time I spend making meals, driving to and from places, doing chores, exercising, watching sports (3+ hours per event) and going out on weekends, oh, and JOB SEARCHING!  The absolute worst part is that I feel like I'm stuck if I ever want to get into something new or want to go out and learn something.  I always feel I'm stuck in a routine that I have a hard time breaking.

I'd love to live in a world where I could get paid to consume all this media.  I know it's over my head, but I can't find a solution to most of these kinds of things.  I cut down my Netflix queue based upon what movies I could talk with my friends about.  I stopped going out and drinking for sports games I don't care about.  I started deleting podcasts I don't think I would enjoy or would see as a waste of an hour.  It's a process, but I just need to take the steps to eliminate the waste in my life, as depressing as that sounds.

Day 16: My Views on Mainstream Music

Mainstream music is still good.  That was easy.

To be more honest about it, I do still like to listen to the radio every now and then.  I don't know if there is this new Id, if you can call it that.  But people now feel obligated to save certain technologies because they are being phased out by other ones.  When people heard that tape-decks are no longer going to be put into manufactured cars, I'm guessing that it would seem very hipster to go out and buy a bunch of tapes now.  But there in lies a power of something being considered "hipster".

For instance, Beck put out a new album this year.  But I bet you haven't heard any of the songs on the radio.  Why?  Because he released it as sheet music instead of something that can be pirated and bought for $.99 on iTunes.  It seems like Beck is being super-hipster in this sense because you have to learn how to play music or have friends that know how to play music in order to hear his new songs.

But with regards to mainstream music, I think that because of so many artists now going into techno-dance beats, they are losing their original touch.  I listen to podcasts more often, which I think is what is going to happen to more and more artists who want to get their music out there.  Tiesto, Dyro, Pretty Lights, Afrojack and so many other DJ's can put together a solid hour of music in a week and then have millions listen to it through their ipods and smartphones.

I don't think mainstream music, as an industry, will be able to last the way it has.  The structure has to dramatically change or else no one will be able to make any money from it.

Going back to what I think will happen with most musicians, I think that we will see a shift in musicians having more control of their product.  I also feel like since there is a market out there for people to pirate music, I think we will see more and more people choose between music they want to pirate and music they want to purchase.  It's like if you walk into a subway and hear a musician play a song you like, you'll throw in a dollar but if it's not a song you really enjoy, you still will listen for free.  May not be a complete theory.

As I was writing that last sentence, I thought of an idea which could be a potential money-maker.  It involved music, people, a website, and micro-purchasing of music.  It could be worth something.  I'll have to talk it over with people that may or may not know something about how to get it started.

Day 12: Bullet Your Whole Day

So this is what my day looks like in Bullet form:

• Wake up a little before 7:00 AM
• Make Keurig coffee (Marylou's Mocha Mint)
• Drink coffee while checking e-mail and internet crap
• Get dressed
• Put in contacts
• Leave for work around 7:30 AM
• Sit in traffic listening to a podcast
• Get to work around 8 AM
• Work for 2 hours
• Go to McDonald's and get a $1 coffee
• Go back to work for 2.5 hours listening to podcasts
• At 12:30, go to lunch
• Ate lunch while checking phone and Twitter
• Went back to work for 3.5 hours
• Drove home
• Video-recorded a huge ass Acura fire on Rte. 128
• Went to Panera, ordered the Steak and Cheddar panini with Tomato soup with a coffee
• Drove to my parents house and watched the most recent episode of Mad Men on the DVR.
• Came back home, got comfortable, which means take off everything but mu underwear and socks
• Blogging and listening to some podcasts
• Go to gym
• Take shower
• Have a snack
• Watch some Netflix or Hulu
• Go to bed