Last week was stressful at the office. It’s expected this time of the year but it still felt overwhelming at times. Thankfully I spent most of this weekend enjoying one my main hobbies, record collecting.
I don’t usually consider collecting records a hobby because I’ve been buying music my entire life, but it occurred to me this weekend that I enjoy the process of shopping, researching, organizing and playing records which definitely counts as a hobby.
The word hobby is defined as, “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure”. Well, this past weekend the majority of my leisure time fell into records.
First, I put together a four hour DJ set from my record collection for Saturday night. I’ve added several new records to my collection and wanted to include those in my set. It takes time to go through all of my records, choosing songs, making sure I slot them in the set in the right order, etc. Below are my choices all boxed up and ready to go.
Later that night, from 8:30 pm to 12:30 am, I played all of these records for people at Vinyl Tap, a local record store/bar in town. My wife joined me for my set and we were home around 1:30 am to crash for the night.
That next morning, I was up early and excited to attend the last Record Convention show at the Nashville Palace. Two of my co-workers were meeting me there at 11 am and we shopped until after 1 pm. I saw so many friends while shopping that it felt great to catch up with people all in one spot.
I left that show and swung by a local Goodwill where I found another stack of great records that I bought mostly to resell. They are all records with great covers in the exotica/Hawaiian/percussion vein that people collect.
Finally, last night, my friend and I recorded an hour plus podcast about our recent record purchases and the new R.E.M. Monster reissue.
Today I’m spinning records I bought over the weekend and appreciating the ability to spend this past weekend immersed in my hobby. It helps me decompress from last week and be prepared for whatever this week might bring.
Aaron Hartley 