Interesting that you still use 

Last.fm

! 

I discovered that between high school graduation and going to college and I was floored by the concept. SCROBBLING!

haha.

By the way lately i've been noticing i'm no longer bahambug about pop music coming on. I'll be pumping gas into my 

Hyundai

at the gas station -- yes there are still us plebs who use GASOLINE ! -- and a pop song will come one and i'll be dancing a long to it instead of being annoyed that the gas. station doesn't play QUALITY music.

Here's a great line for you from 

Haruki Murakami

:

“I've heard it said that the happiest time in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really get to us. ... Pop songs may, after all, be nothing but pop songs. And perhaps our lives are merely decorative, expendable items, a burst of fleeting color and nothing more.”

Now I won't go as far as to say pop music means something to me these days, but i can sure enjoy them now.

Dance Dance Dance

by 

Haruki Murakami

 
This story is one that makes me feel no anxiety about dying without writing my own book. It basically encapsulates me as i see myself. Read this in my mid twenties.

The Great Gatsby

Haven't read this since high school but this is the first book that I "read". This was the first book that I read on my own accord where I thought "this is actually not a story but this is real life."

The Idiot

by 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Emotions captured in ways i see accurate.

The short story 

Three Thousand Dollars

by 

David Lipsky

. I no longer identify with this but there was a time where this was my bible.

Remember that summer we read 

Bukowski

and 

Haruki Murakami

 while working at that phone bank? I've done some stories based on that experience as well. Also adding more intrigue as you said into people and situations.

Haruki Murakami

always shares in his interviews that when he's working on a great story he never knows where it's going.

I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story.

Back when I was swooned by anything and everything tied to Murakami I tried to act on this notion too. "I shouldn't know what I'm writing about. I should write to find out!" 

I started writing this comment thinking to suggest maybe we are the opposite... we do need to see the end? But as I finish this comment another idea ccame to me. I'll put it in a post.

I made this error in so many different ways but one was misinterpreting.

I misinterpreted 

Haruki Murakami

characters as being aimless and in ennui when now after more critical readings of it I understand that actually his characters are not in ennui at all. They are busting their ass trying to make something or find something. 

However I mistook Murakami's world and characters and stable and aimless because the aesthetically that's what it felt to me. The long walks... the cooking... the long periods of not talking to someone....

In my 

Writing

I've been most burned when being unaware of my influences intentions and more focusing on their

aesthetics

  and getting lost in that sauce.

Just like how you described in your post here.