A lil itty-bitty mix this month that I have to admit I like but don’t love. Like: the songs are good but not a lot of them really pop out as memorable. I don’t know if that’s because I’m not in much of a listening mood these days or I’ve exhausted the music seams I mine these mixes from. Or I’m just getting old. I turn fifty next month. Every passing day I feel a little more irrelevant. Or I’ve fallen prey to the American celebration of youth, then judge myself irrelevant. Or I’ve fallen into a fifth-decade existential trough. My mom told me fifty and eighty were hard birthdays. At least I have all my hair and it’s not cloud white, not yet.

I love music. What is a song? What is this sound? Why can’t I hear it like I used to? The melodies are nice but I’m tired of musicians and jealous of their youth. Do I listen to nostalgic music, whether recorded forty years ago or made to sound like it, like a security blanket? “Is It You I Miss” by KESMAR comes to mind. Or the Let’s Eat Grandma cover of Nick Drake’s “From the Morning.” I’m playing a lot of LEGOs with my son these days. Maybe that’s all it is.

Still querying agents. It’s not going well. I don’t know if big-five publishers are the best fit for my novel, even though I did while writing it. I still like it, thankfully. It’d be nice if someone liked it as much as I did.