I'm a music junkie

I have a confession to make. This is something I've been battling for a long time, but it's time I finally stand up and admit it. You see, my name is Jeremy, and I'm an alcoho…oh wait, wrong support group. I mean, and I'm addicted to music. \nThat's right, I'm a sucker for songs. A harlot for hooks and harmonies, a -- well you get the picture. \nI know I'm not the only one whose CD collection spans into the hundreds (and could be in the thousands if I had the money and time), whose computer houses gigabytes of downloaded mp3s or who visits the local indie store on a near religious basis to scour the used CD bins while having to resist the temptation to walk out with another handful of discs. \nI see people like me on campus, always with a pair of headphones on, walking to class and singing along; people treating desks during a boring lecture like a personal drum kit. These people are my peers, the ones who suffer the same wonderful affliction of music madness. And I am now standing up to be officially counted among them.\nI was a late bloomer in the music world. I picked up on the things my family and friends were listening to, but never became interested in them until halfway through high school. I was an alterna-teen at heart, following in the footsteps of my older brother's musical tastes. And at my core, I still stay true to rock, because it's what brought me into the scene in the first place. Lately, I've had a second renaissance, branching out into blues, which I had previously dabbled in, as well as jazz and soul, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are many more genres to go. \nOnce I arrived at school, I discovered another avenue to satiate my audio desires. With the help of my trusty Ethernet, I found out that all those great concerts I'd seen in the years before, that were now fading to black in my memory, could be easily obtained by people who had taped them! I was like a kid in a candy store, and my shoeboxes full of Maxell tapes at home filled with live shows can attest to that. With the advent of CD burners, the trading world moved into a whole new realm, and I now I've got stacks of shows on CD-R waiting to be labeled and stored. \nOf course, nothing can compare to the real thing, and I love the feeling of walking into a dark smoky club and seeing a band's equipment up on stage, knowing that wondrous sounds will emanate from that spot in minutes. It's one of the ultimate highs and the main reason why I'm willing to drive four hours away like I did last night to see a concert. It's an obsession, something that needs to be fed every few weeks or else I go into withdrawal. \nEven scarier, and if you needed any more proof than the picture accompanying this article that I'm a complete dork, I came up with the idea last year of creating "The Soundtrack to My Life," where I would create a CD full of songs that directly related to pinnacle events of a three month period, be it a concert I saw, or just one of those moments where a song hits you like a ton of bricks. Call me crazy, but I am enthralled and strangely comforted with the idea of pulling out one of these CDs 20 years from now and being able to be taken directly to certain moments of my life at the sound of the first chords. \nSo, big deal, I like music, right? That's the whole point. Now is the best time to pursue this obsession. This university is filled with so many different kinds of people with so many different kinds of backgrounds, that the chance to discover new music and branch out into even more kinds of wonderful sounds is right now. Turn off the Top 40 radio, step away from MTV and go out in search of music you want to hear, not music you're forced to hear. There's so much more great music to be discovered that's been swept under the rug of popular culture. \nMusic is my radar, guiding me through my days as the one true constant. I embrace it, I learn from it and I love it, and I will never be able to get enough.