Sorry for the delay of my review for those of you who requested it but here goes. If you're not familiar with The sorensilk iPod Challenge, start here and make your way through my posts over the last 10 months to watch my progress at the bottom of most of my posts. Now, a few fun figures:

Number of songs - 7112

Hours of music - 496.8

Number of days - 317

Total file size - 36.09GB

Averaged 1.5 hours a day

Number of songs skipped - 0

Anyone who has a very large collection of music on their iPod can tell you that there's lots of it that they don't listen to regularly. It's just not possible. If I listened to mine non-stop, 24 hours a day, it would have taken me 21 straight days.

7112 songs is just a lot of music. And those are only the ones that fit on my iPod, I have more on my computer. But I had purposefully placed every single one of those songs on my iPod. Some of them were great songs that I listened to several times a week. Others, I may not have listened to a single time since I first loaded them. But then why had I even bothered to sync them in the first place? I decided to remind myself why.

One of my main worries before starting The Challenge was that I would get stuck listening to a lot of songs I didn't want to. After all, when making your way through almost 500 hours of music that had been collected over several years, odds are it's not all going to be 5 star quality. I was right, there were moments throughout my 10 months of listening that my thumb got awful close to the skip button. Generally this was only the case when I was listening to a techno song that I had five different remixes of and had to listen to all of them in a row. Surprisingly though, those moments were few and far between. I was pleased to confirm that I really do have good taste in music.

Anyone who knows me is aware that my taste in music is also extremely broad. Once again, this became even more apparent as I made my way through The Challenge. One minute I would be quietly enjoying "Fur Elise" by Beethoven, and then I was suddenly switching to "Futuresex/Lovesound" by Justin Timberlake. It took a few weeks to get used to these interesting transitions but once I did it became part of the appeal of The Challenge. My music was keeping me on my toes.

The Challenge became second nature within a few weeks. I quickly began to enjoy the variety of music it provided me. I had also gained a new freedom that I hadn't considered ahead of time. No longer did I have to spend any time or effort trying to decide what to listen to. I had a 10 month long playlist set for me. This was an unplanned benefit that was quite gratifying.

The only part of The Challenge that really surprised me was how long it took. I didn't originally think that it would take me close to a year to complete. I was committed to it though and received quite a few encouraging emails about it as I went through. I even had a few people join in.

It was nice to get to regularly report my progress and know that people were following along a little. When the majority of your days blend together it was nice to have something that I was building towards. I've actually decided to continue that idea and start another "challenge" soon. It won't be quite the same as The iPod Challenge but I'm going give everyone regular updates and even encourage feedback and suggestions on it. But more on that later.

Overall, The Challenge was a great experience. It was cool to hear all my music and remind myself why I liked it. I even stumbled across several songs that I hadn't listened to before and have begun to appreciate those artists much more now. Even if you don't want to go all the way through your music like I did, I encourage everyone out there to find a song or an album that you haven't listened to in a while and give it a good listen. Re-discover your music.

The sorensilk iPod Challenge: 1011/06 - 8/23/2007