Singular kind of moment.

It is with great joy that I admit something about myself: I'm kind of obsessed with music right now.

I haven't always been this way; for most of my youth I listened to the radio and feverishly recorded Top 40 hits unto mix tapes. In college, I opened my ears to some of the greats--Dylan, Cash, a lot of Joni Mitchell. But it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized I could be my OWN music filter. It takes a certain development of personal taste, and the building of a mental database, to figure out what you like and why you like it. The soundtrack of my life became less predictable; I wanted it to be more dynamic--a unique mental mix tape, if you will. So I admitted my ignorance to my music-guru friends, and they started me with baby steps in the form of CDs and itunes playlists. Now I feel like a kid off training wheels. I really NEVER thought I'd be the person scouring Paste Magazine reviews every Sunday for something new to obsess about, the one up until 4am attempting to perfect my understanding of an album. But, hey, here I am.

My roommate Brian introduced me to this dude yesterday--Stephen Kellogg, backed by a band he calls The Sixers. He's from Boston, and that's odd because his voice is more gravelly, homegrown, and country-husky than some of the most-lauded southern alt-country acts out there. This song sums up the way I feel about life probably more than any words I'd be able to cobble together in this space. Makes me think about my time in Athens, how much I love these bundles of memories here, and what's to come.

That's all I got today. I'm sippin' iced soy lattes, organizing photographs into cloth bins, and trying to stay really hopeful.