Content moving forward: Music, movies, and books

Tomorrow I will post my fourth music review since getting restarted. It will be the first one pulling from musicians who have followed me on Twitter.

Previously I had worried a lot about calling them "band" reviews because sometimes they were single artists or something other than a band. I am now just calling them "music" reviews, though I believe I will still specify "album" or "concert" review as applicable.

I do not feel prepared to take on interviews again yet, but I have started contacting the band about a week before the review. I let them know what I am doing, and ask if they have anything specific they want noted. I am trying to go through one round of listening first so I know if I am going to hate them. That doesn't happen often, but it can make things awkward.

Possibly the other area for change is that I am still using my ancient AOL address for the contacting, which may make it hard to take me seriously, I know. However, I don't want to have anything but job hunting things coming into my Protonmail. Maybe once I am safely employed...

Daily songs right now are coming from my Black Music Month viewing and watching. Right now they are songs that Nile Rodgers worked on (performing or producing), but I will also get in some ragtime and songs from people featured in The Defiant Ones. Then it will be focusing on reviewed artists, both new and recent, but on specific themes in October, November, and December.

(Note: It has already been the song of the day, but "Hourglass" by Mary J. Blige, which played over the end credits of Mary J. Blige's My Life, is amazingly beautiful. If you haven't listened yet, do so!)

I cannot emphasize enough how much the review retrospectives helped me get back into reviewing.

Once I finished them, I started charting out books from my various reading "months". This is the precursor to building some recommended book shelves. I am almost done with that (the collection; not the selection), but it has led to a new project.

I feel that I need to add my reviews for each of the films that I watched for the director spotlights, and probably at least some of the films beyond that. It's really the same thing as creating a playlist after a retrospective: there was "something" here; did I absorb it enough?

I will definitely add reviews on https://www.imdb.com/, because that is the site I look at. I am open to suggestions on other sites.

Entering the early months was not difficult. In 2010 I read four books for Black History month and read three books and watched a video for Native American Heritage month. Things didn't really start getting out of hand until 2018. That includes watching 60 pieces of media (several were feature films; but not all) for one "month" that took about two years and will now require posting reviews for each, possibly on multiple sites.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that as intended reading and viewing got longer and more complex, it could never be reviewed in a single post.

I am still in catch up mode, where I have overly long lists to try and be where I want to be, but I think going forward, there are just going to be posts on groupings of books as I have thoughts on them.  

That may change again. Once I get "through" (should such a thing be possible), maybe I will go back to four books and a movie during the requisite months. That can not possibly be before 2023.

Also, I am really close to writing about some personal stuff again. I think.