Me and My iPod

For a great long while, I was incredibly adamant that I didn't want to own an iPod. One of my biggest reasons for not wanting the iPod was that I saw too many people who too fully tuned out the rest of the world as soon as they placed the earbuds in their ears. I like being aware of my surroundings. As a half-blind person, it's never been a good thing when I've gotten so wrapped in something that I stopped paying attention to where I was going. I've had my share of bruises, cuts, and sprains to prove it. (Worse yet: the solid majority of these pratfalls always seemed to happen when there was an attractive, single male nearby to witness my moment of glorious clumsiness. The nice ones, I've learned, walk over to check that you're all right. The rude ones snicker and/or ignore you.)

Except that I caved a while ago and acquired an iPod (my first iPod was free, a brick of a thing handed down to me from my father--seriously, I think you could seriously have maimed someone with that iPod...when it died, I had to replace it with a Nano because I couldn't imagine life iPodless), and now I find that I love it for precisely that reason: it creates its own little world I can safely insulate myself in.

It's a wonderful tool when I want to be fully preoccupied with my own thoughts or with one particular type of action (like, say, writing...or cleaning). The music literally playing in my head becomes a background soundtrack for whatever I'm doing and allows me to fully ensconce myself in whatever I'm doing.

Sometimes I wonder if the me from back then, were she to see iPod-insulated-me now, would ruefully shake her head and mourn...