Zen and the Art of iPod

O.K. I admit it, I'm weird. I cannot relax. I try really, really hard to relax but then I realize that the effort is self-defeating for this particular goal. I am always doing something. When I am watching TV, I am also flipping through a magazine or reading the newspaper or checking something out on the Internet or discussing tomorrow's plans. I multi-task.

I bought an Apple iPod a few months ago thinking how relaxing it would be to just sit back and listen to a few of my favorite tunes. I now have 598 albums, representing 150 artists in 17 genres that includes 8,007 songs that would last 23.5 days to listen to it all. I still have about 150 classical music albums to copy onto the device.

Once I had all of my CD's copied onto my iPod I got to thinking, "Maybe I can make better use of the bookshelves" in the living room where I have had all my music stored and displayed. So I backed up my digital music from the iPod (just to be safe) and boxed away my CD collection. When the bookshelves were empty, I thought they looked a little old and dinged up and decided to get new shelves because here was an opportunity to get the rest of my books out of the attic.

So we went shopping for new bookshelves. While we were at it, we bought a new couch and chair for the living room and a new bed frame for the spare bedroom. I decided to buy four foot high book cases for the living room and to use the top of the cases as a mantle which required me to repaint the wall that was behind the old bookshelves. Now that we had some wall space above the new book cases I moved a painting from above our bed in the master bedroom to the new honored position.

This left an empty space above the head of our bed. While we were looking for something to fill that space we ended up buying a new bedroom suite so naturally we had to paint the entire bedroom.

Since I had an opportunity to unpack the last of my books stored away in the attic, I now had a choice of which books to have in the living room and which ones to have in my office. By the time I was done I had moved every book I own (14 book cases or 70 shelves of books).

This all brings me back to the iPod. I was looking at the other things it does besides play music. One of its neat features is what they call Podcasts. These are little, several minute, syndicated radio and/or video type shows that you can download from the iTunes store (for free). I thought I would like the humorous ones so I subscribed to six of them. I figured it would be a hoot to listen to a few minutes of silliness every now and then. They automatically download every day. I am currently 111 podcasts behind and the pressure of "getting to them" is driving me nuts.

I can't honestly say my new iPod has helped me relax. But then again, I'm a little weird.