I canceled my Amazon music subscription this evening, and re-signed with Spotify. While pulling pizza from the oven at dinner time I explained to our middle daughter what I had done - and she asked why.
“Because the playlists on Spotify are so much better”
The voice of our youngest shouted from the hallway:
“I TOLD YOU!”
She didn’t, but this is typical of the reactions we earn from her at the moment. She knows everything, is the expert at everything, and doesn’t suffer fools.
So yes. We have Spotify once more. Or rather, I’ve paid for the entire family to have it once more - because of course I have. Why buy one subscription when you can buy five? I’m looking forward to a day at some point in the (still distant) future when they are all independent, self sufficient, and I’m not paying for all sorts of things for them all the time.
We know that’s never going to happen, don’t we.
Anyway.
I have Spotify once more. I’m currently listening to what I thought was going to be a Taylor Swift playlist, but it’s turned into Katy Perry - and now Justin Bieber. I forgot Spotify did things like that. I just kicked it, and it’s switched to Roxy Music. Go figure. I guess it knows me better than I know myself.
Roxy Music reminds me of a little known TV series called “Red Oaks”. I binge-watched it on Amazon while working in Germany a few years ago. It was a wonderful coming-of-age story set in a country club in the mid 1980s - full of hope, optimism, mistakes, despair, humor, and affection.
So what else has been going on, on “Planet Jonathan” ?
I traveled to the office on Thursday. In this post-pandemic world, traveling anywhere has become a rare delight. Turning up at the railway station at 7am wasn’t quite such a delight - by the time I returned in the early evening I was asleep on my feet.
I’m still running! I could swear I’m getting worse at it though. I’m struggling to make it to 3 kilometres at the moment - quite the step down from the guy that ran 5km almost every day throughout last September. I’m going to keep at it though. Fear of the “Jupitarse” is real.
I guess the final thought today is that the world isn’t all that bad. I made a new friend recently, and it kind of restored my faith in the universe a little bit. It reminded me that there really are good people out there - it’s just finding them that’s remarkably difficult. I guess the trick is actually looking in the first place. I’ve spent so much of the last few years in an insular world of my own making, it’s become difficult to get over myself and step out of it.
Here’s to the real world, and reminding myself that it isn’t as awful as the keyboard warriors would have me believe.