On the heels (and psychology) of yesterday's intersection of a 300-day carnivore diet with a 150-day beard, I write...

It only takes a precursory glance at my post titles to recognize how in recent years, music played a pivotal role. Spotify sat in the driver's seat basically ever since I talked with a Norwegian woman about the service and I've looked forward with a Santa's coming to town expectation for its United States release.

In parallel to my take on many tech firms, I have an on/off relationship with Spotify in an endless pursuit of optimization, yet curiously, for the last couple of months, I just cannot seem to climb back aboard. Its podcast and playlist suggestions aren't so much helpful as they come off as flailing attempts to shape me. And this in a context where Spotify literally has YEARS of data aggregation on me, a treasure trove of material for suggestions! Worst still is its recent model of handing out randomized character logins that look like generated passwords and lacks all the fuzzy feelings of "our customer is a unique, valued individual" and instead makes me think I can be pulled off the rack at Costco in bulk. There are few contexts where I don't feel more like a battery jacked into the Matrix.

I'm just in a place in my life where I just don't want to be tracked and manipulated. I just want to take in a long breath of freedom in a place far from the City. Maybe I'm alone in this, at least as someone who switched out the LCD screen of his laptop and replaced its default Windows install with Linux—I mean, I'd have to think that someone with a predilection toward tech would run toward the blinking lights instead...but, I'm not that other guy hanging out in the duck blind...

...why do I feel that I am?