Listless

Lately, I have been considering my inability to "list". Tis the season to list, apparently. As the end of the year draws to a close we'll soon be bombarded with "The Best ____ of 2006", "The Worst ____ of 2006", "My Favorite_____ of 2006", ad nauseum. I guess I could actually do a list thing like that...maybe, just maybe, I will. I do keep a calendar/journal of what books I'm reading or songs I'm liking or anything else that particularly catches my fancy at the moment. So, it would just be a matter of looking through that and picking out "The Best". Frankly, that scares me a little bit though. You see, I have this tendency to go a bit overboard with new interests. For instance, some of you may remember "The Great Bluegrass Frenzy of '02" or the time I tried to educate myself about fine wines and nearly ended up a penniless alcoholic. Ah, good times. Not that I don't STILL have a warm place in my heart for Big Smith and Stags' Leap Cab Sav, it's just that once I have moved on I tend to look back at my obsessions with Nelson Ha Ha'ing over my shoulder. There's really no need to have that recorded in a public forum, now is there? And, besides, does anyone really care what I like? No. Everybody else already likes what they like. Seriously, if someone is looking to my preferences for guidance on what's good, cool or quality...just don't.

No matter the time of year though, we have become a "list culture". Some lists are much better than others. (Just spend 5 minutes looking around MySpace for examples of the "others".) Why do folks feel the need to list? Is it simple egotism or is it a tool of self-discovery? Are these lists pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that when put together form a complete, comprehensive picture of the person compiling them? Really? I don't get it. My interests tend to be more like rocks picked up on a creek bed; admired for a moment then tossed over the shoulder, occasionally carried in a pocket, few coveted enough to collect dust on a bookcase. No matter how you look at it...they never fit together to form a complete picture of anything. Maybe I'm just fickle. Maybe I just like the process of learning about new things. I am awfully curious, but I'm also loyal, too. Maybe that's why I don't list. I'm never fenced in by any proclaimed preferences, trapped by any "bests" or "favorites". Perhaps in this particular post I have been a bit enamoured with "quotation marks". Don't get too used to it. Tomorrow...the semi-colon!!!