In praise of the iPod

There have been a number of really remarkable technological advances in my lifetime. Perhaps the most obvious example, both in how futuristic it would have seemed to childhood me and in how ubiquitous it's become, is the smartphone. Being able to quickly access most of the collected knowledge of humanity on a device you can carry in your pocket and with which you can also do all sorts of other things from taking high definition pictures and video to talking face to face with someone on the other side of the world truly is amazing, especially if you think about the level of technology just two or three decades ago. But although smartphones are very useful and convenient, does having a smartphone really make me any happier in my day-to-day life than I would be if I didn't have one? I suspect the answer to that question is no. In fact, the opposite might be true, because there are a lot of things about carrying and using a smartphone that are probably not good for mental health.

There is another amazing piece of technology I carry with me that I think does do a lot for my day-to-day happiness. It's something that is already, to most people, a relic of the past. It's an MP3 player.

(Obviously, a lot of people now mainly listen to music by streaming it on their phones and therefore have no use for an MP3 player. I don't do this. I like having a collection of music that I own. I think streaming has its uses, especially for sampling music before you buy it, but I abhor the way that streaming has replaced buying for most of the music consuming public. The compensation musicians receive from streaming services is minuscule. I strongly encourage anyone who finds value in listening to music to help make it possible for musicians to continue creating that music by buying music.)

I enjoy collecting physical items and being able to look at artwork and liner notes, so I continue to buy albums on both CD and vinyl, but the vast majority of my music listening is done using an iPod. And the ability to carry around my entire music collection with me and pull up and listen to any of the hundreds of albums I own depending on how I'm feeling at that moment is such a wonderful thing for someone who loves music as much as I do. Music is such an important part of my life. It's so beneficial to my mood to be able to listen to my music throughout the day. I've realized recently that in some ways, a lot of the things I do in my day-to-day life are sort of things I do to pass the time while I listen to music. Listening to music is the thing that's really important to me, in the sense of my mental and emotional well-being. Cooking dinner? Something to do to pass the time while I listen to music. Household chores? Something to do to pass the time while I listen to music. (Karyn has marveled at the fact that I don't mind doing dishes. I really don't, because it's a good opportunity to listen to music.) My job? Something to do to pass the time while I listen to music. Okay, there is much more that I enjoy and find fulfilling in my job as a research scientist, but I truly do think that one of the most important qualities of any job I could have would be having the ability to listen to music of my choosing for at least a decent chunk of each day. I had a job delivering a weekly local newspaper when I was in high school and I liked the job mainly because I could listen to music (on a portable CD player back then) while doing it.

My most favorite possession, at least when considering items that I use rather than items of mainly sentimental value, is undoubtedly my mountain bike, but I think second place would probably go to the 160 GB iPod Classic that I got for Christmas something like ten years ago now.

I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours listening to music on this wonderful little piece of technology over the years. Two years ago, though, something unfortunate happened. Something in the headphone jack broke so that sound only came out of one of the two channels when headphones were plugged in. I have a 16 GB iPod Nano as well, so I switched to using that until I could get my main iPod fixed. And to do that I waited. And waited. And waited. I'm sure a lot of people recognize the phenomenon that when you have a lot going on in your life, or when you're going through difficult times, or both, you put off doing things that would be very easy to do but that you don't have a pressing need to accomplish. And that's what happened with me getting my iPod fixed, until finally, a few weeks ago, almost two years after the malfunction occurred, I got around to taking it to a repair place.

If I had known how happy getting it fixed would make me, I wouldn't have waited so long!

With my smaller iPod, I could only load a fraction of my music collection. This would generally be all of my recently added music and a sparse selection of the older entries in my library, which I would rotate from time to time. But this meant at any given moment during the day I would be shut off from listening to most of my music. Recently I was finding more and more that the selection of music I had with me at work was getting stale, and that helped push me to finally put forth the minimal effort needed to get the repair done. And wow, once more being able to browse through and select from my whole 10,000+ song library is so great!

(Again, I realize that people using Spotify on their phones can browse through and select from a vastly larger library. To me, there is just something meaningful about having this collection that I put together over the years and that I chose and paid for and own.)

There are some really good albums in there that, due to the circumstances of my broken iPod, I hadn't listened to in years, and pulling up one of those again and letting those familiar sounds once more fill my ears can be an unexpectedly emotional experience. This week I've been listening to a lot of Woodpigeon, one of my favorite bands and a band I was completely obsessed with for much of 2008, 2009, and 2010, but hadn't listened to a whole lot in recent years. I'd forgotten just how much I love their music! And it's cool how hearing a song or an album that you listened to a lot in a certain time period and then took a break from can transport you back to that time in your life.

So that's the story of why I love my iPod. Hopefully it will keep working for many more years to come!

In conclusion: