a vacation in my car

you're right. the vacation was worth it.

because looking back, i can see that it made me feel like an organic human being, occupied solely with living. my life wasn't dictated by calendars, schedules and clocks. i slept when i wanted, ate when i wanted, showered when i wanted. my only concerns were 1) staying alive, and 2) staying happy.

it is helpful to remember what that feels like from time to time.

the thing that is currently helping me simulate my vacation --now that real life has settled back in-- is my new ipod. i listened to it a lot at the beach. but i'm also finding that driving to and from work is now damn-near fun.

for years i've struggled with novel ways to occupy those 40 minutes in the car, twice a day. my tape player is busted. my portable CD player is finicky. the commute takes me out of range of the two college stations i listen to, and oftentimes i just don't feel like listening to news or classical music on the radio. commercial stations aren't even on my radar... it stresses me out to hear 7 consecutive minutes of car commercials. i don't need that. so i have often travelled the whole way in silence rather than deal with any of it.

and i find silence, oddly enough, weirdly stressful.

so, ipod to the rescue! i feel stupid for waiting so long to buy one, because it has now made my time in the car downright pleasant. (well, there are still wildcards like asshole drivers on the road, but at least what's happening inside my car is nice and controllable.)

however, i'm still trying to figure out the best way to use the ipod to achieve ultimate relaxation. i've decided that i don't like listening by "album", as my commute is generally longer than one album's-worth of songs (which then forces me to deal with the click-wheel at 65mph). i think my preference is to set the sucker on "shuffle". somehow the machine picks a perfectly symbiotic string of songs. tonight i heard a nice mix of the future bible heroes, luna, mel torme, edith frost, frank sinatra, and the magnetic fields. yay.

when i bought the ipod, though, it was a big financial trade-off... i knew i would have to make some sacrifices in order to afford it. so i told myself that i could not allow myself to buy any new clothes for three whole months. not even shoes.

i've never smoked, but i imagine this is a lot like nicotine withdrawl. the pleasure of the ipod barely offsets the pang of "want" i get when i open the mailbox and see a coupon from lane bryant.

i think i'm going to have to load some zen raindrop stuff onto the ipod to keep me calm about this.

Posted by xta at November 30, 2004 07:43 PM | TrackBack