The Algorithm Was Right

June tenth.

Simone handed me her phone and said, just look at this, and the thing is she already knew the conversation was over. It was a Saturday afternoon. We'd gone for coffee after the Tuesday session bled into a loose plan the way those things do, not a plan exactly, more like neither of us had anywhere specific to be. She'd been on Spotify for a while by then and I'd been sort of adjacent to it, the way you can be adjacent to a thing for months before it actually lands.

What she was showing me was her Discover Weekly. If you haven't been down that particular rabbit hole, Spotify generates this playlist every Monday, stuff it thinks you'd like, based on whatever you've actually been listening to rather than what you told it you liked when you set up the account. Simone had been insisting for weeks that it was genuinely good. I'd been responding with the face I make when I'm not ready to agree with something yet.

The moment Simone made her case.

She pointed at a song I didn't recognize and said, just play the first thirty seconds. So I did. And it was exactly the kind of thing I would have found on my own eventually, if I'd known to look, which is the part that's a little unsettling and a little wonderful at the same time. She watched me figure that out and had the decency not to say anything. She just waited.

She knew she was right the whole time.

I've been thinking about that lately, the gap between knowing something is probably good and actually letting yourself find out. The outdoor skills workshop is in a few weeks and the trailhead Simone mentioned is fifteen minutes from the site and I have looked at the map more than I have admitted to anyone, including this blog. Some things you have to come to in your own time. Simone understands this, which is possibly why she just handed me the phone and didn't editorialize. The algorithm was right. She was right. I'm catching up.