Phish Project Update

 

One of the most important things I ever learned about being a writer is to know the difference between wanting to quit a project and actually needing to quit a project. Sometimes it’s a matter of needing to restructure your life so that you can finish what you started. Other times it’s more about changing the scope/scale of a project so that not only can you make progress, you can actually progress towards finishing it.

I started this Phish catch-up project because I needed a new series to help motivate me to write on a consistent basis again. In starting it, I always had in the back of my head that this was probably too ambitious of an undertaking, and I’d probably want to quit multiple times because it was too daunting and time consuming. What I should’ve been thinking this whole time is that it’s not an all or nothing project, and I need to stop making this feel like a series of college essays I have to do research and take notes for. It should be fun to do this project, damnit! But sticking to my structure of talking about the show in song-by-song detail simply isn’t possible.

Now, there may still be shows that I have more to say about, and will write longer reviews about. But it’s obvious to me I need to drop the set by set, and song by song, approach. This simply takes too long and I’d probably already be close to done with the Winter ’03 tour if I didn’t start out like this. I’ve been stuck on the 1/4/03 show for weeks simply because it’s not a show worth taking so much time and effort for. If I can get my thoughts down in a couple paragraphs and highlight the important/best moments of the show, why am I going to try to say something interesting about every performance of Waste or Rift? Why am I writing linear walkthroughs of each jam if most of them aren’t top tier versions?

So, whoever is actually reading this: starting with the next review, you’ll be seeing shorter but more frequent posts. And we might actually make it to my first show, 10/11/23, before I’m 50 years old!