Beats

I closed my eyes, letting David Kushner's 'Skin and Bones ' swirl around my head for several seconds, enjoying the deep, rich crimsons and velvety plums of his voice before slowly slipping the headphones off again and handing them back to the shop attendant. They were good quality, and something I could easily afford if I wanted, but somehow I still couldn't justify spending over two hundred dollars on something silly like a pair of headphones, even if they were "a real steal" at the moment.

Black Friday is an interesting time of year, and probably the one day I find myself paying any serious attention to the latest gadgets. Maybe it's a part of getting older, but I rarely care about keeping up with the newest technology anymore, despite having more access than ever, and seeing all the latest releases just makes me feel weirdly nostalgic. It's fun to look, but sometimes I wonder how many times companies will try to continously reinvent the wheel. Everything changes so fast, but never enough to really be noteworthy. Or maybe it just seems that way because it's so abrupt, and there's no time to get used to something before it becomes obselete, replaced by the newest rendition. It's getting to the point that innovation feels almost insipid.

I find myself missing the original iPods and MP3 players, and my blue Skullcandy headphones with the broken wires that only worked when you held the base of the cord at a certain angle. The 2010's-2000 teens were also just a fun time to be alive. Ke$ha, Pitbull, Lady Gaga and Katie Perry had my demographic in an audio chokehold, and I get flashbacks whenever music from my teen or college years flit across my Spotify. I remember finding my old iPod a few months back, which still has hundreds of available gigabytes on it, plugging in my sole remaining pair of none-wireless headphones, then mentally falling backwards into a time machine, to the point that I honestly felt like when I opened my eyes, I'd be staring at puddles of colored light on the ceiling, cast from the strings of Christmas lights in my bedroom that I almost never unplugged.

I miss that sweet simplicity, even though I know nostalgia is deceptive and some things only seem better in retrospect. Despite yearning for decades past at times, however, I also like new things and enjoy change, especially when it comes to myself. In a lot of ways, it feels like I'm a lot like that fancy pair of new headphones: I had become the best version of myself and was notably better than any of my previous renditions, but that didn't mean that there was really anything wrong with the older versions, either. Deep down, I was still just me, just a little shinier and louder than before.

Life is a very strange thing. I don't know who I'll become, but I am optimistic about the future, and one thing is mpre than certain: it feels good to be loud.