With a fast-approaching deadline, what’s a sensible person to do but procrastinate by any means necessary?
My go-to method of dawdling is a visit to the Spotify desktop app to fill out those playlists that have sat dormant for months and to curate my podcast subscriptions. (Remember when I was interested in supply chain management for seafood? Well, now I’m really into road bike racing in Europe. And I need my podcasts to reflect this.)
Anyway, in the right-hand corner of the screen, Spotify tells you what your “friends” are currently listening to. I saw one listening to a song I hadn’t thought of since 2007. When I clicked it, I discovered they were listening to playlist made by their partner.
In that brief moment, I was incredible and unexpectedly moved by this. (Look, it’s been a long pandemic.) It might have been as simple as someone just throwing on a reliable playlist to play in the shower, but the idea that a couple who has been together for a while would not only share but listen to playlists made by each other … well, the sweetness, wholesomeness of it was temporarily overwhelming in the best possible way.
When I had wasted enough time with my own bullshit, I went back to work with a slightly better perception of the world around me. More than the procrastination, more than eventually accomplishing what I had to do, seeing evidence of people giving thought to each other made me feel really good.
Photo by Mert Kahveci on Unsplash