The Spreadsheet Was Real

January third. The gym is still closed, which means Tuesday had to go somewhere else, and it went to the café two blocks from the community center, the one with the corner table that gets the good sideways light in winter. We ordered the usual. I had half an energy bar left in my bag from the climbing session that didn't happen last week, which felt appropriate.

Simone waited until the mugs were on the table to mention it. She had, she said, a spreadsheet. For her Spotify Wrapped data. Not the platform's own summary, her own spreadsheet, cross-referenced, with a column for what she was doing when certain songs showed up in heavy rotation. I made a face. She had anticipated the face. She slid her phone across the table and let me look at it.

The moment the spreadsheet was revealed.

The thing is, she wasn't wrong to have made it. The data was interesting. I just hadn't expected to spend the first Tuesday of 2024 being quietly out-organized by someone who acts like she stumbled into systems. I had opinions about her top genre, which I shared at length. She had one counterargument, which landed, and then we sat with our mugs and said nothing for a while, which is the best possible outcome for that kind of conversation.

The quiet after the argument was settled.

I've been thinking about it since, not the spreadsheet specifically, but the instinct behind it. The wanting to know what you actually listened to, not just what the algorithm decided to surface as your personality. The draft folder has one line about it from last month, about what it means when the noun arrives without the suspense. Simone's spreadsheet is the opposite problem: every noun, accounted for, with its own column. I'm not sure which one I trust more.