Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 14: Joe

Prompt: "The most recent song you heard for the first time"

Selected by Joe

"Everyone in Town"

The Brights

Oyster Rock!, 2023

Let's state the obvious right here at the beginning: I'm not very good at this.

I think this is something that I tell myself so it can act like a firewall against the idea of monetizing what I want or maybe even need to remain a hobby. There's such an intense pressure these days to turn anything you like doing into something that nets a profit. It feels like that idea ratcheted up a few notches during COVID, when we were all stuck at home and half of us suddenly had no income. It's always existed, the idea, but I first noticed it during quarantine, that need to make money by any means necessary, even if that means sacrificing the simple joys in your life.

I'm tempted to call it a Boomer ideal, but I probably only think that because my parents are obsessed with the concept. Pam built this cool little shelf the other week out of spare pieces of wood that she had saved from Willow's old bed, and she painted it and hung it on the wall and that's where we keep the coffee and tea supplies now. It was really impressive! But of course my mom sees it and the first thing that she says is "you could make those and sell them!" There's truth in the statement: Pam could build shelves and sell them, if she wanted to. But that also feels wrong. It's like, there is such a simple joy in taking pieces of wood and fashioning them into something completely new. It doesn't feel like money should be a part of that equation. It feels like money would sour the experience.

But I'm not the one who built the shelf. I'm just over here typing on a blog at Blogspot every day for the past 900+ days. Such a simple fucking joy, taking a jumbled hodgepodge of words rolling around in my head, and fashioning them into something completely new. Sometimes the insidious thought crosses my mind: what if I attempted to make money off of this? What if I was a completely different person than I am now and have always been, and was instead the type of person who was able to set concrete long-term goals and worked really hard to reach those goals? What if I said that I was going to eschew the steady paycheck and halt the momentum of my current career and start over fresh and try to make a living eking out words for any publication that would deign to take me? I think doing something like that would be brave, which is not who I am. I also think doing something like would be a risk, one I'm not willing to take, and will probably never feel like I could or would take.

I'm just doing this for fun. Let me have this. Let me just fucking write on my stupid little blog every day for fun and nothing else. Turning it into something else would almost guarantee that the basic joy that I get from this exercise would be sucked out of it. Attempt to persuade me that I could maybe do this for pay, and I'll say in response: I'm not even very good at it.

I often equate this hobby of blogging to the hobby of building model railroads. There are men and women out there who, a few nights a week, go down into their basements and tinker with model trains. For fun. Just doing something that they enjoy doing, just for them. Maybe their significant others pop down every once in a while and say something nice like "Hey, this new section you built here is really cool." Maybe even they have guests over on a Friday night for pizza and the guests are extremely kind and make a point to check out the setup, see how it's going, taking a brief interest in their friend's hobby to make that friend feel good for a couple minutes. But that's it. These people aren't down there building model railroads because someone is giving them a paycheck to do so. There's no pressure to do anything other than find peace and tranquility doing something that is simple and joyful and fun.

As it has been designed and as it exists currently, Puke on Your Birthday functions in the same way for me. And I like it that way. I don't need to change anything about this setup. I don't need to try to sell it for parts. I'm just over here at my desk, waiting for the next call to roll in about a child in Philadelphia and how they were allegedly abused or neglected in such-and-such a way, at which point I'll stop what I'm typing on PoYB and pick up the pen and take the details and conference with my supervisor, and every once in a while I'll have to X out of the Firefox browser completely because the allegations were potentially so egregious that now I'm headed out to the house to check it out and see if there ain't anything we can do about it, assuming the allegations are true. But you see, because of that, why I need to blog about a relatively new song by an Australian jangle pop outfit that I heard about on another music blog, right? Maybe it's a pressure valve or something. If everything I did during business hours revolved around toddlers who were smacked with belt buckles or teens who were touched inappropriately by uncles, then you can see how I'd fucking go insane. How that's no way to fucking live, paycheck or no. That I need something else in my life to simplify things. That I need to just sit here and blog about something nice, like music. That I need something I can enjoy just to fucking enjoy it. That I would rather give it up completely than sully it and let it be corrupted by money and everything attached to the idea of money in that context—deadlines, outside expectations, financial strain, the sick twisting of something I love into something I despise.

Yes, yes, yes, fine, okay, there's plenty of shit that I'm missing here on purpose or forgetting.

Sure: I love reading professional writers' work, and I marvel at what they do, and I am so appreciative that they possess the bravery that I lack to get out there and put their words out there and hang their livelihoods on their unique ability to do so. I'm not really talking about the idea of music journalism in this blog post. Or maybe I am, but I'm more making the case as to why I will never and/or could never be one? I'm making a larger point here that I am not good enough at whatever "all this" is to be a music journalist or professional critic. What is left out of this blog post, by design, is that sometimes, reading about music brings me more joy than writing about music, and I try not to take for granted the fact that there are driven writers out there making that possible. (Updating this post to say: solidarity with all the writers who got fucked by the the inane decision to move Pitchfork under the GQ umbrella. Like, what?!)

Sure: I understand that not everyone has the privilege to be able to earn a paycheck doing "important" work out there on the streets of their city while also typing a few (million) words in the spaces and seconds in between. I would love for nothing more than for the children I try and fail to help in this fucked up town to be able to grow up and find familial stability and have a good job and also have time to enjoy a hobby like blogging that they're doing just because, but I know the statistics, and I am grateful and also forever feeling guilty that I find myself born into a life that led me here, to this place of comfort—it's privilege, and I'm doing my best not to take that for granted.

And sure: Maybe I'm not the best at understanding that this simple joy that I get from writing words on the screen for fun is not necessarily a simple joy that other people get from the same task. At the top of this blog is a list of names of all the friends and family who have made significant contributions to Puke on Your Birthday over the years and some who are doing so currently, at great length, and I believe with my whole heart that each contribution has been a worthy one. I love reading what other people write, and, in my opinion, this means that these people, these friends, are great writers. But I also acknowledge that I think that way and that I love what they write because I am projecting, at least a little bit. I'm imagining that everyone shares that sense of peace and satisfaction when they type the final word of a blog post and sit back and just say goddamn that was awesome. I know not every feels that way. I know not everyone likes building model railroads. I know that some of you are here because you want to be a good friend and humor me. That's fine too, and I hope you know how thankful I am that you are here, regardless of why you are here. I love you guys. All of you. Everyone who is writing a blog post for their chosen song today, for whatever reason: you're the fucking best. Thank you. Thank you for bringing even more joy into my life. I sincerely hope that you find yourself able to share in that joy.

Well shit, now I'm getting sappy. But that feels good too, ya know? It feels good to have this space to get sappy, to tell one's truth, to be honest and write from the gut, to find out something about yourself that you didn't even realize was true until your fingers typed it out. If we're talking about "quality of life," then the emotional satisfaction I get on this blog more than balances out the fact that I'm making less money in general by being here (both by not monetizing my time and also by not having a better-paying job that would insist that I actually put in a solid eight hours daily instead of spending half that time blogging in fifteen-minute chunks). I have a good life. I know this. If I was making a list of all the reasons that my life fucking rocks, then blogging... might scrape the bottom of the Top Ten. But it would be on the list, is my point! I am happy. I am content. I am blogging on Blogspot in the year 2024.

Oh yeah, about this song I heard for the first time recently, I think—