albums i listened to all the way through

posted this week and every week (28)

Aug 24, 2025

I am tired of reflecting.

I know how that sounds. Clearly, there is a massive shortage of appropriate, considerate, and self-aware reflection amongst human beings all over the world, but particularly in the United States. I’m not sure how or why that is, nor am I really qualified enough to suggest a reason, but it’s real.

Lots of people shit on Gen Z for our Internet and social media-bred self-centeredness. Yes, we use therapy-speak like slang and say, “I just feel like…” about five-hundred times a day, but even those quirks don’t mean we’re truly reflecting on ourselves, our lives, our choices, our environments, and our communities.

I’ve seen people of every age resist critical reflection, be it because they never had to reckon with it or they never learned or they just choose not to engage.

Whatever it is, I have to admit that as someone capable and willing to reflect, I am utterly exhausted by it right now.

If you know anything about academia, you’ve probably heard or even submitted a reflective essay or assignment detailing all you’ve learned over a semester. Depending on when these assignments are given, they are often useful for both instructor and student to assess learning. What did you think? What did you learn?

I was brought up in an intensely honest, reflective culture. I’ve been in some form of therapy since the age of eight. My dad kept up a daily reflection journal for a decade. My family worked in the mental health field for decades. Beyond that, I took my reflections in academia very seriously—probably too seriously, in some cases.

I am well-acquainted with reflective practice and have developed my own adult mechanisms for doing so every week—for one, this newsletter.

The thing is—I’m so tired of it.

Before I started this newsletter, I used to listen to music religiously on the morning and evening commutes, thinking and reflecting and thinking and reflecting. There was so much of my past I regretted—so much I wish I’d said or did or didn’t do. Guilt held my brain hostage for years.

What does this have to do with the albums you listened to this week, Abby?

Hmm, not much, admittedly. Part of me couldn’t focus on the music because something inside me fought to be heard every moment of the day. Actually, the only albums that transcended this thought spiral were Substance by New Order and The Clearing by Wolf Alice.

I will admit I’m feeling some proper adult burn out. In therapy this past week, my wonderful therapist talked me through these feelings as she always does—with empathy, expertise, and a sense of humor. While I am always appreciative of this, there are times I wish I could just exist like krill in the ocean—not aimless, exactly, but guided in a way I don’t have to think about too hard.

I think this is why music, particularly albums, speak to me with such authority. I chase the feeling of losing myself in the music—of being guided but not aimlessly drifting off into the depths of my own despair.

Some days, I just want to exist without having to think.

The burn out arrived in March of 2020.

I have a distinct memory of submitting my application for library school. It was February 28th. I was sitting in a study carrel on my favorite floor of my undergraduate library, personal statement, transcripts, and application at the ready, and feeling a sense of certainty I never felt before wash over me.

“This is where I was always supposed to be.”

I hit “Submit” with relief and excitment.

Then—well, we know what happened.

I moved back in with my parents and finished my “Easy A” final semester in my childhood bedroom, barely getting a 90 in the film studies course I felt I could ace. I somehow graduated from college as the valedictorian of my department in my parents’ basement on Zoom. I got a few part-time gigs and drove aimlessly down dirt roads, completely unsure and traumatized by the world standing still when I was ready to run full-speed ahead.

I listened to Punisher this past week, and all these memories came flooding back to me. Five years of what was once an iron-clad certainty in my future—living in Washington DC, becoming a successful, well-educated, published librarian, etc.—suddenly thrown into extreme flux.

There is very little of that people-pleasing overachiever still here within me. She started to fall apart the second the Library of Congress told me no. She fell to the ground the second I got the letter in the mail informing me I was really sick.

She finally died when I found myself in an infusion clinic, hooked up to an IV filled with minerals I never knew I lacked. I sat there in the recliner, surrounded by other patients, stuck for hours, trying not to feel the same imposter syndrome I felt at work and in social situations.

How sad is that? Clearly, I belonged there. I had diagnosed, extreme nutritional deficiencies and still couldn’t begin to feel at ease because of the stares from all the people who looked like they needed to be there. Why is this young twenty-something in an infusion clinic?

When I tell my immediate peers about these experiences, they shudder, wondering how I managed it. It’s a good question. Honestly, I still don’t know.

Well—I have one strategy.

Here are the albums I listened to all the way through this past week. S/o to Billie Shafran, Robert C. Gilbert, and Josh Datko for your album recommendations!