Hello, my name is Annie, I’m a self-diagnosed manic depressive.

I am about to turn 30 and that scares me. It scares me because, like many people, I am not where I thought I would be at this point in my life. Thirty isn’t necessarily my scary age or anything – that might have been 25 actually – but it is a turning point. I am lucky enough to have an awesome husband who is amazing and supportive and happy. All the time. I am fortunate in so many ways – and yet it feels impossible to stay consistently happy and satisfied with life. I want to get over some of the f*&%ed up issues that have haunted much of my adult life. Battling manic depressive tendencies, self-image issues, self-doubt and hatred. I don’t want to enter my 30th year and my third decade on earth feeling the way I have for so much of my life.

A fresh start is required.

With this sense of impending doom and roiling uncertainty I have decided to commit myself to therapeutic wordplay. I will blog each day for the next seven weeks. I will commit to trying something new each day. Heavily researching a person place or thing I currently know nothing about will count. Trying a variety of different brandies and deciding once and for all whether I love it or not will count. Ordering something different at Starbuck’s will not. It’s just too shallow.

Today’s obsession is EDM (or electronic dance music to most of the world). My day started productively enough until Levels by Avicii popped in my head, and before I knew it I was trying to decide if seeing him in Vegas in April would be preferable to seeing him in the much closer and cheaper Toronto the day after my birthday. I also need to decide if sticking with the easily customizable V-Moda Crossfade LPs for $199 versus the M-100 model for $310 will mean a huge step down in sound quality when rocking out to my quickly growing selection of Avicii, David Guetta and Hardwell music. Alas, my main issue of the day has become reconciling myself to the fact that DJ Magazine ranked Armin Van Buuren over Avicii and Tiesto on their Top 100 DJs list for 2013. I await the 2014 list with baited breath. Is it possible to love EDM so much and not be a molly-soaked douchebag in Vegas, spraying sticky (and overly-priced) champagne, reeking of bad cologne? I don’t know – but I’m going to damned well try. This is Day One and I’ve already found my self jacked up on EDM video playlists and Coke Zero dancing in my living room by myself while the sun is still up. I can’t wait for Day Two.