Fuzzy Frustrations

Once I hit my 30s I made a concerted effort to be more patient when attempting new activities. This was a big concession for me because for a long time, like most teenage boys, I was not exactly a fast learner when it came to understanding that mastering a new skill took time. For years I gave myself a very steep learning curve, usually a couple of months at the most. Couldn't play like Stevie Ray Vaughan the first time I picked up a guitar? Screw it, time for something new. It has only been in the last couple of years that I finally came to grips with the fact that getting good at new things takes time and a lot of initial sucking. I can tell I am making progress because there is no way the 22 year-old version of myself would have stuck with golf while being this bad for this long. However, that doesn't mean my new attitude has spread to every facet of my life. What I'm starting to discover is that while I'm more willing to struggle with new things, I have less patience when it comes to gadgets and machinery, especially things which might be a couple years old. I simply can't stand having to fight with a machine which should be working perfectly because it doesn't have as many complex parts as the latest gizmos. If I have an alternative I'm still very quick to jump to it.

There is a new radio station on the dial in Boston and even though the format change resulted in a few former co-workers suddenly finding themselves without a job, I can't help but like the new playlist. (Sorry, guys. I wanted to hate it, honestly, but I just can't.) However, the station they took over had a pretty weak signal and could only be heard on the best and clearest of days, which is half the reason the last station went out of business. The new company has boosted the signal a little, but it still comes in with a fair amount of static. It is fine as I'm driving around but, much like my cellphone, the reception is particularly spotty in my bedroom. Since that is where I do the majority of my radio listening, this is a bit of a problem. The other afternoon I decided I simply couldn't take it anymore and tried to improve the signal by messing with the antenna, which on my stereo is just a wire. Trying to find a position where I could hang the wire and have a good signal, then step away without static coming back in as soon as I let go was a total exercise in frustration. I gave it exactly 10 minutes before deciding it wasn't worth the effort and I would just listen to my iPod.

It was extremely weird to be fighting with an antenna, if for no other reason than I hadn't had to do it for years. Of course, I lay my lack of success completely at the station owner's feet. How can you launch a radio station in 2012 and not make sure the signal is strong enough to reach a wide audience? It is not like this was a department store which didn't know the area and didn't know which product was going to be in demand and sold out as a result. Those guys can correct it next month and in the meantime they have a bunch of other stuff to sell you. All this company does is broadcast and they don't appear to be able to do that with any great skill. People wonder why radio has been slowly dying for the last couple of years, this is exactly the reason. There are simply more reliable ways to listen to music which don't require the wind to be blowing in the right direction or your neighbors to not have their disposal running. Also, most podcasts don't have 5 minute commercial breaks for every 20 minutes of talking. If you are going to make people give up the control they have with their personal music libraries and ask them to sit through commercial breaks than you had better not make them strain to hear you on top of it, because these days people just won't stand for it.

Unless this station wants to have new owners and yet another new format in a couple of months they need to work on improving their signal and doing it quickly. Because if they think I was impatient in trying to listen than they need to meet the generation which is coming up behind me. Most of those kids have never had to deal with anything but lightning fast internet and high definition cable television. They are the first ones to have grown up in an exclusively on-demand world and have come to think it is the norm. At least I know I'm impatient and occasionally remember to give myself a reality check by thinking about how slow the internet used to be or how amazing I found the sound quality of my first CD. The next group coming along flip out when a video has to buffer for 10 seconds, so don't expect them to spend any time messing with a radio antenna, if they even know where to find it. As for me, I clearly have some work to do on increasing my level of patience. The good news is that if the only lapses I continue to have during my quest for greater patience are with pieces of technology which are going to be outdated soon anyway than I can continue what I'm doing and just wait them out. Ironically, that will just take a little patience.