Well, folks, as the ubiquitous artist and philosopher Britney Spears would say, “Oops! I did it again!”. It’s been a full month since my last post – a music review of one of my very favorite pop songs – and it’s pretty clear to see that Films Like Dreams has hit a bit of a rough patch. I’ve made goals and promises I’ve failed to keep and the end result has left the vitality of this site hanging in a bit of a metaphorical limbo.

At this time, I should probably give a bit of an update of what’s been going on with me lately. A nice, shiny promotion at my real-life job has me working pretty much full-time – and sometimes a little more, since we’ve recently found ourselves a tad understaffed. As a result, I’ve sadly had less free time to watch movies than I had before. Even though I find myself watching movies in a theater more often than I ever have before, home viewing has become significantly rarer these days. Through the months of April, May, and (so far) June, I have failed to keep up the movie-a-day goal I’ve so effortlessly managed the previous five years. As the end of April deadline for my long-running monthly recap started to approach, this failure to watch (what I see as) enough movies led me to decide to conflate this month with the next. The real pickle began to ripen once it became clear that I would also fall short in this  proceeding end goal.

To be honest, these monthly recaps simply stopped being fun a long time ago – for about a year now, it’s felt like I’ve been doing them out of mere necessity and not because I genuinely wanted to complete the task. It’s gotten to the point where they feel more like a chore than anything else – which is definitely not what I want this blog to become. Therefore, I have decided that these monthly recaps will come to an end, effectively immediately.

So, what else has been occupying my time lately? Well, even though the One Random Single a Day challenge has pretty much imploded upon itself and become  full-on failure (well, not really… a little over 100 reviews written in less than half a year ain’t bad!), I’ve still been spending most of my free time with music-related stuff. I have been trying so hard to keep up with all the latest music releases, and for the most part I’ve been pretty successful. And in regards to the pop music world specifically, I’ve warmed up to a nice weekly schedule for myself, wherein I check the updated Hot 100 charts as they are published online every Tuesday and keep track of what’s rising, what’s falling, and what is on track to become among my most and least favorite hit singles this year. I won’t let any sort of cat out of the bag at this moment, but I will say that there’s bound to be some pretty interesting stuff on my end-of-the-year lists.

The most prominent challenge I’ve encountered, though, has been the challenge I’ve granted myself to listen through each one of the Now That’s What I Call Music! compilations (1-62). It initially started out as something to do out of mere intrigue and boredom, but I soon found them to be a pretty fascinating time capsule of the shifts and changes undergone by pop music since the dawn of the 21st century. Most of the biggest hits of the past 17 years found  warm welcome in my eardrums once again, including many that I had almost completely forgotten about.

I have very recently completed this NTWICM! challenge – but I’m not finished with it yet. At this time, I am working on a monster blog post where I rank all the releases by the most essential to the least, with much of my own personal tastes definitely factoring into it. It is probably one of the most ambitious projects I have taken on, and even though it’ll take me a lot of work to figure out a satisfying ranking – as well as writing the whole damn thing out – I am really excited to share this end product with everyone once it finally does reach its conclusion.

And even though it’s been quite a long time since my last Billboard challenge post, I do want to stay on track to complete it! I swear!! So I’m going to start chipping away at writing about a few songs here and there from the next year’s Hot 100 (1982), and we’ll see where we can take it from there. So keep an eye out for that post as well.

But what else does the future hold for this site?? Truthfully speaking, I really don’t know. As I said, certain challenges and blog posts that seem exciting at first often turn out to be quite a bore once I jump into the thick of it. It’s really frustrating as someone who really, really strives to find a strong vision for themself and share this vision with a loyal audience. I have yet to write anything that is really worth remembering, and while I love seeing other wonderful writers out there find their own success in their own ways, I can’t help but feel a tinge of regret that my writing will never be quite as good. As I said, I’ve held onto this site for about four years, and I’ve been a semi-active member in various social media spheres for a little longer. If no one has told me yet that my words have touched their heart or mind, who’s to say that this will ever happen?

Then again, that may just be the cynical side of my brain speaking again. I beat myself up about so much everyday and I wish I could just stop this and think positively! So, the positive spin on this is that I’ll be making posts on this site for myself and myself only. I’ll share things like lists and reviews, but if it’s nothing particularly remarkable, I’ll keep it for myself to publish here and for others to stumble upon as it may occur. This very post will be an example of such. Sharing my own posts have given me some unrealistic feelings of what to expect, as well as negative feelings of being let down when it doesn’t get a single other share or comment. Nothing I say is special – I know I’m not a very talented wordsmith and the thoughts and opinions I possess are basic as fuck. I’m not funny, smart, thought-provoking, or all that special from anyone else around here. I’d rather all the attention go toward those who rightfully deserve it, as any positive reactions I’m bound to get will probably just be from those who feel sorry for me for some reason.

Whoa. I really need to tone down the negativity and self-loathing. I’ll backtrack a bit.

So additionally, the huge elephant in the room has become the focus of the blog itself. Despite having held onto the name Films Like Dreams for something around four years at this point, it’s very clear that the site has taken a remarkable shift toward music reviews. Films Like Dreams has become a remarkably misleading title for the page, which undoubtedly makes it awkward for my trying to advertise the damn thing. Although I hold a particular amount of fondness for the name I have clung onto for all this time, there’s no denying that a change is in order. I can’t yet say how soon or late this will take place, but don’t be surprised if these changes come underway with little to no preceding announcement.

I don’t really know if anything else is worth mentioning at this time. All I do most days is work. I watch movies whenever I get the chance. But most of my free time is spent listening to music. That about covers it. So I’ll try to write more here whenever I can, and refrain from making promises about completing challenges that I simply can’t promise to finish. If you’re one of the five people who actually genuinely looks forward to what I write in here (if those even exist), I hate to let you down. Maybe I’ll go back to recording video reviews or something. In any case, I’m really stuck in a rut right now, so unless I figure out how to get myself unstuck, inconsistency is what you’re gonna have to deal with on this blog from now on.

I’ll post the Now That’s What I Call Music! ranked list in a few days or so. Thanks for reading.