I'm in real musical limbo right now. I spent several years not even switching-on the hifi after (stupidly) trying to turn the hobby into a job, and also because of unceasing frustration with unreliable valves: I ended-up scared to switch-on for fear of something expensively combusting and taking my speakers with it...
Along the way I lost touch with the music I loved, and am now finding less fulfilment in that music without knowing where I'm going next. I'm not someone who has to endlessly chase novelty, but I also can't return to the cold-sick of my distant youth: it dismays me when I see fat, raddled old codgers like me dressing-up like kids from the 70s and 80s, hobbling arthritically about to geriatric bands 40 years past their use-by date...
I've always listened to a lot of radio broadcasts, but can't abide local or commercial stations (most DJs need grinding into dogfood), and now I find R1 almost entirely a celebration of mediocrity (artists with any real edge or creativity are hidden in the small hours, if at-all), R2 is ear-Horlicks, R3 is increasingly just young women yapping for an hour about how their wombs inspired their creativity, R4 is all dreck and tory propaganda, R5 mouthsturbating sportw@nk, and now 6Music is trying to be R2 for the not-quite-so-nearly-dead: I mean, ****ing Craig 'Crack-Lisp' Charles in a ****ing primetime slot... That's the best we can muster?
Not 100% sure my system is quite where it needs to be sonically, either - just temporarily replaced my pricey and cult-following power amp with its cheaper and supposedly more-mundane monobloc predecessors, and actually enjoying them more... Didn't see that coming.
I even seem to be listening at lower volumes nowadays - another surprise. Hey-ho, onwards-and-upwards...