happy (for reals) new year

I know that new year's resolutions can be folly. I've had them before. I've even been successful with them before. There's such a crash slide coming into the holidays I'm often susceptible to wanting them... to counteract the stress and shopping and the inevitable mess my house is. 

I find myself happy coming into the new year. Go figure. So I have ambitiously set a number of resolutions for 2022. (It will be the year of the Tiger btw. It's supposed to be an unlucky year for me...a time to be cautious. I'm both a Tiger and a Leo. I've always thought that was a cool consistency.) 

I even bought a tracker to track my progress. I tested a number of phone apps and have settled on the tried and true method: paper and pencil. (I find myself needing a little distance and space in my relationship with my phone.)

My list of resolutions are still jostling down to the final set. This includes a resolution I added yesterday: to explore the Rolling Stones list of top 500 albums of all time. My resolution is rather loose. I'm targeting the top 50, and I fully intend to skip anything I don't like. But Marvin Gaye? Joni Mitchell? Sign me up. I was happy to see I owned a handful of these albums. It will be a pleasure to revisit them.

The first album I explored was Joni Mitchell's Blue at #3. What's nice about the Rolling Stone article is they include a synopsis of why the album was impactful. Like movies before our time, it can be challenging to appreciate how groundbreaking something was if we weren't there to experience it.

I'm not here to write a review or anything. But the album is certainly haunting and raw while being beautiful. As a singer I appreciate how naked the vocals are. If you've ever had a sad Christmas, you'll relate to River. And I've had the pleasure of attempting to sing A Case of You as an acoustic duo. In fact I've covered a few of her songs (though not on this album) including Chelsea Morning, Woodstock, and a jazz version of Help Me by Karrin Alyson that never quite got off the ground (it kicked our collective asses).