What Year Is It? | SOTW Update 05/17/2025

What a comeback, huh? Four whole posts after my last hiatus and I’m on hiatus again. Sorry for the wait, everybody. It’s been a hot five months since there was so much as a whisper on Max Todd. (Dot Com!)—a whole lot longer than the three-month gap last year that then felt like a failure. It turns out, a huge hassle move immediately followed by my first semester of grad school was a bad time to reestablish a habit, and it all caught up to me around mid-November, when I last posted—I don’t know why I thought the three scheduled Songs of the Week posts plus my Songs of the Week Annual review would be feasible to finish alongside three final papers by the year’s end. That’s why, around February 2025, I’d fully given up on completing my 2024 schedule. Still, is that really an excuse to quit without even a video for my 11/15 Songs of the Week? My instagram is asymmetrical now and I can’t stand it any longer. Something’s gonna have to change, and it’s not going to be my “Song of the Week” proposed plans from last summer—I was still talking myself into a habit I couldn’t sustain. Instead, I don’t think I’ll stick to a distinct plan, but I’d like to lay out a tentative schedule so you guys know vaguely what to expect:

Upcoming SOTW Like I said, at the end of 2024, I’d scheduled and started three Songs of the Week, and while they ended the year in disarray, I’ve finally finished the essay-length reviews I started, which will be dropping biweekly starting on the the 30th, with time for my videos in between. After that point, I’ll likely need time to complete this quarter’s final research papers, but I’d estimate by mid-July I’ll be able to release a few more Songs of the Week from the backlog of eleven or so I have outlined. Ideally, I’d love to have developed a writing habit in that time that can balance releasing all eleven planned while also working away on the next great American novel while also acing grad school while also building a sizable inheritance for my progeny while also guiding the zeitgeist towards antifascism while also winning friends and influence, but I should know by now not to promise so much just in case none of that pans out. I also say that because, if nothing else, I do owe you guys one major project that still needs some love…

SOTW Annual Review Can you really call something a tradition if it’s only ever happened twice? I figured it’d be easy to keep Songs of the Week Annual Reviews rolling out like in 2022 and 2023, but as these beasts have bloated even on a weekly scale, it’s been increasingly difficult to psych myself up to complete an Annual Review with the depth to match. I know it’s my own project and I have the power to create whatever scale I please for these things, but like, I wouldn’t put it out if I wasn’t proud of it (especially these days), which is why the 70% complete Annual Review for 2024 hasn’t—and will never—see the light of day. Okay, okay, I’m halfway kidding. Rather than fart out an Annual Review mid-March, I’ve decided I’m going to lump last year’s material into a Biannual Review for 2024-2025. Don’t worry, all you avid, 10,000 word-per-post readers, this wouldn’t condense most of the content—I’d still feature my top five songs and artists for both years, but since 2024 was something of a nothing year for me (as I’ll explain in this eventual post), I’ll combine my top five artists and albums sections. If nothing else, this gives me time to listen to enough new albums that by January 11th (when this project due December 31st will more than likely release), I’ll have actually listened to five albums I’m excited to review—in 2024, I hadn’t even listened to five new albums in total, so I was kind of roughin’ it. Anyways, even if those extra eleven Songs of the Week posts don’t release, I’ll at least guarantee this one. I worked hard on what I had, so I hope you all like it—there’s an extra-long breakdown of a Wilco EP in store just for the two (2) people who will appreciate it.

Videos Finally, though I haven’t been posting them here, my Songs of the Week have been releasing with videos on instagram since way back in August—that’s right, a whole three videos. It’s embarrassing to quit a habit just three attempts into trying it, but in all honesty, I think I was doing videos to increase viewership/readership just as much as I was because I had a few good ideas for them, and as a result, they already feel cringey to me. Maybe it’s just because I’m a bit too burnt out by video editing for work to include it in my hobby, but I’m just not feeling them these days. Still, I have a few SOTW shorts that I like the concepts for, so I’d really like to continue these if I can, at least for these last three complete posts (plus the one I never finished in November). This is another “no promises” one, and I hope that’s alright—we’ll just have to see what happens.

Okay, I know this one’s almost exclusively bookkeeping, but I hope that clears up a bit about where I’ve been and where I’m going. Like I said, I’ve got three posts locked, loaded, and ready for release starting May 30th, and there will almost certainly be other stuff in between, so stay tuned. Y’all be good now.