Remember the Radio?

A look into my over-thinking (don't worry, I'm working on it with my therapist)

Recently, I was driving a car.

Normally, this wouldn’t be big news, but this wasn’t my car. No, my car is an itty bitty, usually dirty Ford Fiesta that I’ve owned for so long, it’s basically an extension of my body at this point. I was driving a borrowed BMW. A fancy car. A car with special caramel-color interiors and a ✨back up cam✨

Speeding down the 405 in San Diego, feeling comforted by the bleached concrete I associate with California, I did something I haven’t done in YEARS ….

I turned on the radio.

Around 2014, when my car was barely three years old, it started playing this super funny prank on me: it would randomly just stop. Complete shut down. Full halt. I’m extremely lucky it only happened on side streets and at red lights. If my car pulled that kind of shenanigan on an LA freeway, we both would have been toast. That radio also began sputtering high pitched static out of the blue, which I assumed was an electrical issue or messages from a ghost stuck in my dashboard.

When I googled the problem, I saw that Ford had recalled the entire transmission of my car — something even I, who couldn’t remember which side of the car my gas tank is located, understood was pretty rough.

I brought the Fiesta into the shop and Mr. Ford himself replaced the faulty bits of the transmission system. However, the radio wasn’t included in the makeover. It never turned on again.

But almost ten years later, here I was, windows down, sun on my face, and my fingers on the radio dial. Come on, Ryan Seacrest, show me what you’ve got.

Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” played. Songs by Third Eye Blind or Hootie and the Blowfish or Train played — I can’t tell the difference, but somehow I knew every word to every song? The radio commercials made me laugh. Acting on TV is now Oscar movie caliber, but somehow acting in radio commercials has gotten significantly worse since I was a kid during the thirty minute ride to school. Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” played again.

When I arrived to my destination, I realized I’d been listening to the same station for my entire drive. For the rest of the day, “Every Morning” by Sugar Ray was stuck in my head (“every morning, shut the door baby don’t say a word”).

This would’ve never transpired in my car, where my phone is the DJ. If I listen to music, it’s songs I handpicked for a playlist of songs that just happened to be on my mind the day I made the playlist. And if not music, I play a true crime podcast episode I pick for myself or an audiobook that I also picked for myself.

Sugar Ray would never end up playing on my phone. I didn’t even know that’s who sang that song — I had to google it! If I wasn’t confident that I heard that song every single day of my childhood on MIX 107.3 Jack Diamond in the Morning, I would be questioning how the heck I know about that song at all.

But it’s not just about the song.

I felt a surprising lightness realizing that I didn’t make one decision for the entire drive. Whatever intern is in charge of deciding what song comes next chose my music for me! Thanks for lightening my mental load there for a hot minute!

Why did I get hit with a rush of nostalgia for life before The Internet As We Know It? Afternoons where, after minimal channel surfing, my siblings and I watched whatever episode of The Last Airbender was on. We couldn’t be sure we’d even seen all of the other episodes, much less seen them all in order. If a rerun felt too stale, we checked out what was on Disney Channel, probably. I’m sure there were other options, but they weren’t nearly as vast as every single episode of every television show ever made in the history of television.

It’s probably a symptom of decision fatigue with a dash of FOMO, but oftentimes having so many options feels like a bigger responsibility than I can handle.

On days where none of my handpicked songs hit right and I only have microwaveable burritos for dinner, I only have myself to blame.

If I don’t like the tv show I’m watching, I don’t just try to find something else to watch, I scan through all eight streaming services I’ve stolen passwords to. In the days of channel surfing, if nothing good was on, I’d turn the TV off and read. But now there’s always something good on. And it won’t magically appear to me like a 45-minute infomercial for Proactiv at 12am on a school night. I’m the one who has to be proactive (sorry), and find what’s best for me.

And who said I know what’s best for me?!

This question stops me dead in my tracks in the middle of Trader Joe’s. It haunts me when I casually google “apartments for rent in Los Angeles and Seattle,” or when I consider changing banks. Where is the line between feeling anxious because I’m on the verge of making the wrong decision and feeling anxious because I’m making a decision and that can be anxiety-inducing?

So, anyway, this was an extremely roundabout way of asking:

Choose wisely.

Because that’s all we can do.

Love Always,
CWolf