Four Stars, One Broken Skip Button

The skip button on my iPod Shuffle stopped working reliably sometime around March and I have done absolutely nothing about it. This is relevant because tonight I got three songs in a row I do not remember adding, one of which was something I downloaded during a very specific mood in 2007 that I do not need to revisit, and I just had to sit with it because skipping required pressing the button four times in a specific rhythm that only works about sixty percent of the time.

It is a first-generation Shuffle. The square clip-on kind. It holds maybe two hundred and forty songs on a good day and I have had it synced to the same iTunes library long enough that the playlist on it is basically an archaeological record of whoever I was every six months for the past two years. There's running music on there from March when I started going back out in the mornings. There's something embarrassingly earnest from around the time I submitted that creative writing piece. There is, apparently, that 2007 song.

it's survived a lot. i respect it.

I was going to sort out the library tonight. That was the plan. I had the laptop open and everything. But it was almost eleven by the time I actually sat down and honestly the sorting-out energy had fully left the building by then. So instead I just laid there with one earbud in, one out, clicking the center button in its little four-press ritual, and let it play whatever it wanted.

one earbud in, one out. the classic.

There are worse ways to spend a Sunday night when you're tired and the window's open and the air is that specific kind of warm that summer does where it feels both heavy and okay at the same time.

I'll sort the library tomorrow. I've been saying that since April. The Shuffle doesn't seem to mind.