A New Year Brings Changes: My NEW New Year’s Music Resolution(S)!!!

New Year Resolutions are easy!

I mean, all you have to do is write something down on a piece of paper or type it on a computer and you’re good to go.

Right?

Right?

Ha, ha!

Well, it might be easy to state one, but certainly much more difficult to follow through.

And following through is the most important part.

In my personal life, the family gets together and lays out our own individual and group goals at a dinner. We do this to publicly state what we want to accomplish in the next year. We also have follow up dinners to track our progress.

There’s nothing new or innovative about this process. However, life is so complicated and stressful that it often seems like nothing is being accomplished. The goal discussions brings everyone’s attention back to the positive aspects of accomplishments–even those that are incremental and don’t seem very obvious.

And I am a firm believer to make goals attainable without being ridiculous–like work goals often are.

It makes absolutely no sense to have a goal that can never be reached unless you can warp to another dimension.

Sometimes I even make silly goals. There was one year when I felt I would change things up by setting a weight goal that was larger than what I weighed because it gets frustrating focusing on a goal that seems impossible. Thankfully, I never did attain that goal of three hundred pounds, but we had a good laugh every time it was brought up! And I ended up losing weight that year! Hey! The pressure was off!

Concerning my music goals, since I have selected an annual goal of playing or debuting two new artists per show, it has been an automatically renewed goal.

I limit the goal to two because sometimes my show only has enough for two new artists: an opening number and a finale; all of the other space is accounted for and there really is no extra room.

Now I could make it an average number per show which can average out over time. However, I don’t want to be tempted to NOT play artist debuts on a show.

But I also feel a need to add another meaningful goal…but what?

So, I’ve decided to focus on what I consider to be a weak spot in my musical obsession–SINGLES!

Although I do listen to singles (one track songs or files), I pretty much do it as an afterthought when I don’t have much time or I’m tired of listening to albums and I want to “take a break” yet still listen to something without committing to a lengthy listen.

I came up with this idea after talking with several independent artists who aren’t always sure how to promote their music.

They feel very strongly about single releases.

I don’t.

But after looking at this year’s as yet uncompleted Philby Hot 100 Songs of 2021, I found nine official single releases.

That surprised me because I would have thought the number would have been smaller.

In other words, whether I want to admit it or not, singles had crept into my listening and reporting habits.

Therefore, I will seriously focus some of my attention on singles by listening to at least one per day.

I will allow this goal to be averaged over the year in case I go out of town or something.

I intend to do a follow up or two to track my progress and give some thought to what I’ve learned.

Just for the record, I began this goal at the beginning of the year.

59 days into it, I have listened to 100 songs!

I seem to have adjusted tp the goal.

So that’s it!

I now have two music resolutions and I am excited about them!

Also, I liked this picture and didn’t want to delete it!

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