Adam Keys is Thinking

• “Uptight”, Steve Wonder
• “Summertime Blues”, The Who
• “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, The Beach Boys
• “Good Vibrations”, The Beach Boys
• “Jungleland”, Bruce Springsteen
• “Once In a Lifetime”, The Talking Heads
• “Flashlight”, Parliament
• “Rhythm Nation”, Janet Jackson

• Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
• Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
• The Blueprint, Jay-Z
• Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder
• Sign ‘O The Times, Prince
• Symphony No. 9, Beethoven
• The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky

Doing a short snooze in the middle of the day? I highly recommend it if you have the means. Ideally, one of these places (in order by quality of rest):

1. Couch nap
2. Chair nap (recliner/lounge chair, ideally)
3. Bed nap
4. Sky nap (airplane)
5. Train nap
6. Car nap

Places I have napped, for better or worse, and would not recommend:

• A rock concert (The Who, Bruce Springsteen)
• A college lecture
• A piano recital
• Voyage of the Little Mermaid (Walt Disney World, Hollywood Studios)
• Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln (Disneyland)
• American Adventure (Walt Disney World, EPCOT)

• Motown Bohemian, curly hair, The Wild, The Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle
• Denim, muscles, Born in the USA
• The introspective wanderer, bolo tie, Human Touch
• Revival, the flavor-saver goatee, The Rising
• The rock ‘n roll stateman, dark vest and necktie, High Hopes

• “Summertime Blues”, The Who, Pete Townsend
• “Estranged”, Guns ‘n Roses, Slash
• “Glory Days”, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band
• “Highway to Hell”, AC/DC, Angus Young

• The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky
• The Planets, Gustav Holst
• “Good Vibrations”, Brian Wilson
• “Losing My Edge”, James Murphy
• “I Feel the Earth Move”, Carole King

• “Unchained”
• “Everybody Wants Some”
• “Hot for Teacher”

Television: Severance (Apple TV), Andor (Disney+)

Movie: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Music: deep dives into Carly Simon, Nina Simone, J Dilla

Book: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut

Blog: Pain Don’t Hurt (a 365 day series of short essays on Roadhouse)

By my calculations, I managed to write about fifty pages between my blogs this year. That’s about double what I wrote in 2021, so I’m pretty happy with where I ended up here! 💪

My best writing this year, in my opinion:

• An ideal weekend
• The paradox of process
• Leadership keywords
• Perspective, you want it
• Think your thoughts

• “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, Richard Strauss, the opening
• “Symphony No. 6”, Beethoven
• the rest of the Western classical music canon

Nothing, nothing, nothing makеs me happy

Nothing brings me nothing but joy

So if you haven’t tried nada

I really think you oughta

— C. Fischoeder, Bob’s Burgers

On minor funks, needing a reset, and indeed doing nothing.

The Reset. Occasionally, the things I do stop doing it for me. Games, shows, books, magazines, etc. I pick them up and realize I’m bored with all of them. I require a break from my breaks.

Oddly enough, taking a vacation or extended weekend with too little purpose or purpose too close to routine seems to generate the same response.

The Reset almost always involves going offline, to some extent. Not like Craig Mod hiking through rural Japan¹. It sometimes involves catching up on chores, tidying up the house, or extremely low-key home improvement².

Related: YouTube could use a function for this. “All my subscriptions & recommendations aren’t doing it, we need to go weirder/normal-er”.

Doing absolutely nothing is an option, but ends up feeling a little more hollow than free-ing.

More often, rebelling against my routines and script-following tendencies works. Binge-watching, grinding a game, ignoring diet, etc. sometimes get me clear.

The trickiest bit is when I’m in An Indefinite Funk. Hobbies seem shallow or meant to impress others or not fulfilling anymore or too much like work or too expensive/intensive to maintain.

So far, I don’t have a great antidote for that. Last time it happened to me, I reverted two decades to making music, decided it still wasn’t for me, and went back to enjoying and sometimes studying/pontificating on music.

Going offline is in some ways a luxurious and nice way to reset. We so rarely allow ourselves a moment or location of offline-ness. If you have to book a flight or outfit your Porsche 911 for camping, so be it. It’s fine to just put your online devices in another room, too.

Recommended: do yourself an Ideal Weekend ³:

• Get coffee
• Go for a walk in a nice park
• Take a nap
• Read a book
• Go for a swim
• Stroll through the vibrant part of your town

Any weekend that includes most of those is likely to give me a reset such that any funk that is imminent or currently occurring goes away.

Were I faced with an intelligence not of this earth, but one that shares our understanding of what music is/for, these are the exemplars I would hold up for them to understand our cultures through my favorites:

• Hip-hop: “So whatcha want”, The Beastie Boys
• Rock and roll: “Highway to Hell”, AC/DC
• Symphonies: “Symphony No. 7”, Beethoven
• Pop: “Walkin' on Sunshine”, Katrina and the Waves
• Jazz: “Giant Steps”, John Coltrane
• Funk: “Mothership Connection”, Parliament

Listening: Afrobeat, e.g. Fela Kuti

Best musical discovery this week: an excellent Apple Music playlist Shapeshifting, catalogs jazz fusion with indie, hip-hop, electronic; all the modern genres

Watching: Jon Hamm easily steps into the title character of an apparent Fletch reboot in Confess, Fletch; sharp humor, well written, way better than I expected!

Playing: Marvel SNAP - every few years, I end up playing a card game for a few months 🤷🏻‍♂️

Reading: Rhodes/The Making of the Atomic Bomb + Gleick/Genius + Wellerstein/Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States - I’m trying reading in clusters. It’s slow going, but I’ve wanted to go deeper on the Manhattan Project for years. Now’s the time!

Last Bob’s episode watched: “Full bars”

I’m rapper slash actor Queen Latifah in her U.N.I.T.Y. phase.

– Gene in Halloween costume