Not long ago, I got an iPod. It's one of the older models, a 10GB one, that I got when the new ones came out and my favorite retailer put their remaining stock of the old ones on sale. (I didn't actually get mine from that retailer, because all the stores in my area were sold out; I got it from a different retailer, of which I am far less fond.)

And boy howdy, do I love my iPod. I should explain that I'm not usually an early adopter, mostly because I can't afford to be. I'm tech-savvy, but I'm not enough of a geek or gadget freak to want to spend my meager discretionary income on the newest toys. So I've got an inexpensive stereo, an oldish iMac, a very basic cell phone that I bought used on eBay. The only reason I have a DVD player is that my fiancé's old housemate left his behind. I once bought a PDA (also used, on eBay) but sold it back when I realized that I had no use for it. I do have a digital camera, a relatively nice one, but that's mainly because, after hearing me drooling and obsessing over it for weeks, my fiancé found one at our local salvage store for a great price and bought it for me. In short, I'm not completely gadget-crazed. I bought the iPod, after having convinced myself I didn't need one, because it was stupid cheap and seemed like it would be nice to take along on a 7-hour road trip that I'm taking this summer, when I start grad school. I didn't expect to love it; in fact, I was somewhat afraid that I wouldn't end up using it much.

But I was wrong. Since the day I got it, I've been loading it up with new and favorite records from my collection and other sources. I've packed almost two days' worth of songs onto it so far, and I still haven't quite filled up 3GB, which is just amazing to me. Sure, it's just a tiny fraction of my collection on there, but still, being able to walk around with 750 songs on a device that clips to my waistband is just pure bliss.

Maybe inevitably, the iPod has made me spend money. I upgraded to OS X so that I could take advantage of the new iTunes music store (where I haven't yet started spending money, but I will, I'm sure). I recently started subscribing to eMusic so I could find even more tracks to put on my iPod. I've bought accessories and a case for it. All in all, I've treated it sort of like a pampered pet.

But I don't feel too bad about doing so, because the iPod brings me constant joy. I find that I'm listening to music a lot more than I used to, at work, when I travel, and especially in the car. My commute takes about half an hour (it should only take twenty minutes, but thanks to major road construction, it's gotten longer lately), and since I don't have a CD player in my car, I used to just listen to NPR when driving. (I do have a Discman that I can hook up to my cassette player, but it always seems like more trouble than it's worth with a short commute.) But now, I just put the iPod on "shuffle/songs," and it's like having my own personal radio station—one that doesn't have commercials and never plays a sucky song.

I love the "shuffle/songs" setting, because it keeps things interesting. But I've discovered that my iPod is somewhat capricious and often seems to have a mind of its own. The other day, for example, I finally put Cheri Knight's The Northeast Kingdom on the iPod (amazing that it took me this long, considering how much I adore that record). On the way home, the iPod served up "If Wishes Were Horses" from that record, a great song but not one of my very favorites on the album. Still, I was happy to hear it, and sang along. But then the next morning, the same song came up again! Apparently, the iPod likes it better than I do.

And then there's its Jam fetish. Okay, so maybe I do have a lot of Jam songs loaded on. (I think "At the BBC" boxed set. So far. There's lots more to come.) But the iPod plays a disproportionate amount of the Jam. I don't think I've ever turned it on for more than five minutes without a Jam song coming on. Not that I'm complaining, of course--I love the Jam, though I wish the iPod didn't favor their last, somewhat lesser album so heavily. It's just more evidence that it's a capricious little creature...er, gadget.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I've decided that instead of continuing to bore Bill, the fiancé, with daily tales of what I heard on my iPod, I'm going to blog about it. My hope is that that will prompt me to write about what the various songs mean to me, and what parts of my life they relate to, so that I can then also write about love, life, loss—all the things that made me want to start a blog in the first place. We'll see.