The Thursday Dispatch - 18 June 2026

So, I’ve been journaling for a month straight as of today. That’s waking up in the morning, usually before coffee or even a shower, sitting at my desk, and writing down the most immediate things on my mind. I do this to set some structure for my day, but also to clear my stressful thoughts out so that they’re taken care of and don’t spill over into other areas of my life, what I call clearing the cache.

One thing I write down as a part of this is an album I want to listen to. I have a list I wrote down a couple months ago, and the goal is to go through that list, which will also continue to grow through the year as new releases come out. I’m honestly terrible at keeping up with this. Most days, I write down the same album I did the day before. I love music, so the question has become how do I keep from doing something that I frankly find absolute joy in? I find that strange.

Over a decade ago, I had a much better ritual when it came to new music, back when iPods were the thing. I would sit down at my computer, import a new album into iTunes, listen to every song, and give it a rating from one to five stars. This would feed these smart playlists I had, which, based on ratings, would dictate which songs made it into the pool. Songs would be kicked out the minute they were played and not let in until a certain amount of time had passed, based on when they were last played and their release year. It was a good system until iPods were discontinued and streaming broke the behaviors in Apple’s software.

Long story short, somewhere in the last ten years, I stopped listening to music the same way, and I want to make my way back. I think I might have found a solution.

I made an Apple Shortcut that looks at when sunset is for that day and schedules a walk starting 15 minutes before sunset in my calendar. I do this because I like walking at golden hour, since the sun isn’t as mean at this hour and you can get some nice photos. I’ve found it’s also good for lowering your cortisol levels, which is good for getting higher-quality sleep. Anyway, the key to this is the fact that I’m scheduling this act. By doing so, I’ve made a commitment. It’s hardcoded into my mind that this is something I’m going to do, which erases the excuses I would have for not doing the act.

I need to try this with music. I need to designate an hour, say from 7p-8p, dedicated to listening to an album or two. This will be my new music hour. The goal will be to cut through this list I have and actually make my commutes and workdays better and maybe get some reviews up. A thing that’ll positively affect other things. For some reason, time blocking works for me, and so I think it’s worth experimenting with this for music. It has worked for journaling & for taking a walk, it should work for listening to music too.

Weekly Photo

Charles Schwab Field and the Omaha skyline. I took in the game between Troy and Ole Miss. I’ll have something written about this experience soon.

Songs in the Chaos

This is my weekly list of songs that either caught my attention or came to mind this past week. I post these throughout the week on a site called Crucial Tracks, where they’re also added to a playlist on Apple Music. Feel free to follow me on either space.