While in the past, I would kick off December 1 to consider the year that lies ahead as I verbalize New Year Resolutions, the beginning of October is an apt time to consider the impact of the current year's focus and the shape of things to come.

Focus is a good thing. There are times I regret my tendency to bounce around, as I conceptualize and categorize in order to retain and discard as I consider different angles and approaches to all the bits-and-pieces of the junk drawer of life. The approach is not without merit: if a single subject cannot be exhausted, can we ever say we know it? And if it can't be known, then we know nothing. However, an interdisciplinary approach gives us the knowledge of just a slight arc of content, so that we have this collage of...something. But without an overarching vision, I fear it makes me an asset for trivia night. It's the basis of my 2020's Blade Runner, Entrepreneur and Fitness Guru construct, though it has ultimately become hyperopic, or at the very least a bit unwieldy!

And of COURSE, I want MORE SIGNAL and less noise; I examine where I am at and where I want to go. If you're out on I-40 somewhere in New Mexico, taking a couple laps around the Flying J truck stop, won't get you any closer to Flagstaff. Even if they dethrone your PRs!

In recent days, I have focused a LOT on music service. The thing is, it's NOT about music service. It's about control: what do I do to enhance my existence and what do I allow for others to shape that existence?

Sin steals, kills and destroys. This timeless wisdom is as relevant as it has ever been. On a personal level, all the great regrets of my life were after the sweet fruit of sin and the indigestion that followed; I didn't trust the two greatest commandments: love God and love my neighbor as the BEST way to live. Rather, in rebellion, did I ask, is this wise? No, I took the stage to be a god.

Thus, when I see FAANG promote sin, I recoil. They no longer speak to my heart. The thing is, I ABSOLUTELY expect their behavior—what else could the unregenerate do? They are blind to God. And while I wish Spotify did not promote podcasts, playlists and people that celebrate sin, thereby advocating for a system that leads to despair, decay and death, I'd be on board with just having the option to filter it out or let me build it to my reqs. But seemingly, it's not about my parameters for the system. Instead and tragically, they are on par with what's out there, one big Russian reversal joke:

• In America, you watch media on phone. In Soviet Russia, phone watches YOU!
• In America, you mask your face at store if you want. In Soviet Russia, store masks YOU!
• In America, you control your music. In Soviet Russia, music controls YOU!

The thing about sin is that I think it's going to feel good, that I'll be better off with it. Only later do I lament how sin is just a corrupted knockoff of something God invented and retains the rights. And like any bad knockoff, WELL OF COURSE the imitation causes harm!

And yet, there is a war within me, "For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate" (Romans 7:15, HCSB).

Yes, I've been through justification—there's no fear there; I'll be spending all of Eternity with God to enjoy the entire Universe! And because He has opened my eyes to see His goodness, He now leads me through sanctification, this path through life that can be so challenging. Good news: if I go the way of my parents, my download just has 33% remaining before glorification!

All of this comes to this point: I neither desire to celebrate past missteps nor do I even want any reminders of them; Spotify and Big Tech intends for me to have joy about sin—I do not: celebrities, the wealthy and power brokers rot in miserable lives. Heaven forbid I'll ever covet that wretched existence! I want something infinitely better. One way leads to life; the other leads to destruction.

I don't know if Big Tech and general music streaming services are a reflection of today's culture in context to virtual dimensions (and all the photo filters and associated ramifications thereof) or if there are those who are using their outsized power to shape society (think Facebook). But frankly, the macro is immaterial to me because I cannot change it. I can, however, like fitness, control my intake.

Thus, as I look to what lies ahead and the shape of things to come, I'd like to pivot from the successes of 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 to turn my attention to the infinite. While it took until 2020 until I could create lasting results with fitness, now that I'm on the descent of this long flight as I reach my weight destination, I recognize that there were only a handful of waypoints when I actively recognized my chief purpose.

I find it challenging to apply Idagio for the simple reason of my current inability to appreciate the genre, and by extension, the service itself. At $14.26/month, it's steep just for someone to hold my hand to fjord the classical currents. I have an idea I might roll out to become better, like have a Vivaldi week, another one on Medieval times, but ultimately, I must ask if I'm willing to commit to the daily hours of listening into 2022 for in 2021, large segments were earmarked for audiobooks. Would I be further enchanced instead by swinging the monthly subscription toward a fine-tuned target of personal development? There comes a point we gotta narrow our scope and drive that Pareto into the sunset!

Honestly, it's just hard to drop $171 to use this in the next year especially in a context where I just paid under $15 for a year's worth of secure email! Furthermore, I paid a whopping 27 cents to host this website for September. Domain renewal notwithstanding, forget about the price of a coffee per DAY: literally for a single cup of Starbucks, I'm on pace to host this website for an ENTIRE YEAR!

The virtual world ought to be far cheaper than it is. It's just shared rackspace for not just 5 people sharing the same light bulb above, not just 10 people in the same room, or even a high school graduation's worth with all the fading names and sharp faces therein. rather it's scalable to BILLIONS—admittedly, a challenging number to conceptualize, but for each person who connects to the Internet through whatever device, they could run a web server on that same device using the same power they already use—the wealth of a decentralized platform! In fact, on some level, most folks run a handful of web servers at home, even if they are oblivious to the IoT nature of it. So, why is the Internet SO expensive when it comes to content? It's not the hardware or its operation...

...I suppose this is the part where I say that the invisible hand of the market says a streaming service should be $5-$15/month—YET, the supply is limitless, isn't it? So, where's the equilibrium? Yep, basically sitting right there on $0.

I get the gym model: plop down the cash and bada-bing, bada-boom, there's higher quality equipment, paid with real-world dollars that I might otherwise be fiscally locked apart from its access. Plus, there's maintenance of the equipment and space for it! It's a downsized example of the power of network effects. Network effects is the draw of Facebook and also why when I ran a private server of World of Warcraft, the game's mesmerization evaporated.

And at absolutely nobody's surprise, this is the power of a distributed platform like torrent for sharing content, that if just one person copies a file to 100 people, and in turn, those 100 copy to another 100 each, there's only got to be four iterations of the sequence to share a single file to the entire world, or 100^5 = 10,000,000,000. Pretty easy to visualize, not unlike that ol' Kevin Bacon game. And yes, if you're wondering, I'm just a couple of jumps from IRONMAN:

1. Me
2. Jeff Mullen - UFC Judge & my karate instructor for a couple of semesters back in college
3. Joe Rogan - UFC color commentator & podcast host
4. Robert Downey, Jr.

Shoot to Thrill!

At any rate, it costs little time or resources for the individual in context to the compounding power of a network. So, why does a streaming service cost so much?

Does it have to do with all the little payouts that occur before I'm stuck with the bill? I just checked out the commodity price of coffee which puts it at about $1.92 for a lb of unprocessed coffee. So with a 12 oz retail bag, its coffee bean input costs roughly $1.44. Now, somewhere along the way, the Black Rifle Coffee Company enlists it into BUD/S, making its price ramp up to $15.99 for me to shell out. All I got to say is that Murdered Out dark roast better be able to overthrow a third-world dictatorship!

Of course, like coffee, what we pay for with streaming media is not for the costs associated with the content itself. Episodes of ST:TOS, ST:TNG, ST:DS9 and ST:VOY have long since been paid, not unlike all the content by Vivaldi and Mozart that have since fallen out of copyright that are free. Rather, factors to be considered include the metadata and being locked into a centralized model, things that are largely immaterial to our enjoyment of the content. While in context of all those years when I managed the id3 tags of my MP3s, it's a service I appreciate, but I just can't see it adding THAT much cost to the user—not in terms of factors over production costs, ESPECIALLY as its charged irrespective to actual customer use! I mean, I get it, it's a Chinese buffet, but that's at least in limited supply...well, Jell-O notwithstanding.

No, of course it's all about the profit—somebody's profit as it relates to licensing as some of these streaming services come off like an independent convenience store held sway by the marginal gasoline market. But, an inexplicable (for me anyway) profit that seems to use today's network effects to compound profit while jabbing a clipboard into its subscribers hands with a 90s model.

All that aside, it's my basic take on every hospital parking lot I've ever seen: those BMW's aren't gonna pay for themselves.

It's a weird transition, isn't it, this matter-to-energy conversion of goods to services? I once spent money and had something; now, I spend money and have nothing. It's unsettling.

Not so fast: I just might stick with Idagio for I am really LOVING it! The biggest drawback of its usage is...frankly, ME! I just don't know what to like...YET. Sure, in my strengths, I can invoke Freebird, Mayonnaise, Everlong and America. However, in this context, all I got is Clare De Lune? Nessun Dorma? Beethoven's 5th? Is Time to Say Goodbye a thing? I get a sense that a singles schema does not apply the same in this genre—if I may paint it with broad strokes.

I gotta admit, I am a sucker for Idagio's clean interface. And they do curate a LOT of content. Then there's new albums broken down by orchestral; concerto; chamber, solo instrumental, choral and song, and opera.

Further on its Discover tab, there's this sampling of titles from its Playists for You:

• Postcard from Florence
• Transatlantica!
• Postcard from Rome
• Forest Murmurs

Furthermore, look at this write-up for Forest Murmurs:

Most of us are drawn to the beauties and mysteries of the forest, but composers have an ulterior motive: the tantalizing prospect of capturing those things in sound. From Purcell and Geminiani to Hans Abrahamsen and Robert Patterson, they have done just that.

This playlist takes its name from one of the most fresh and radiant moments in Wagner's 'Ring' Cycle. It takes in the darkness of the primeval wood, including the heaving winds, creaking trees and mystery critters of Sibelius's ghoulish 'Tapiola'. But courtesy of symphonies, operas and instrumental works, from huge orchestras to a single guitar, we are reminded that the forest is not just a place of wonder. It is a place of refuge, of joy and of intense creativity. And potentially one of transformation too.

Indeed, this is uplifting and brings me closer to the person I want to become.

And its Moods tab with a spin dial just makes sense:

• Happy
• Joyful
• Radiant
• Festive
• Passionate
• Excited
• Nervous
• Angry
• Tragic
• Sad
• Melancholic
• Peaceful
• Relaxed
• Gentle

While I flirted with the prospect of returning to a general music stream service to hack through weeds of ideology, step over tribute band knockoffs and avert case studies in the doctrine of total depravity, it came to me, "why pay for such misery?" Chiefly, does this—or anything else, aid me in becoming whom I envision to be? Or, am I just playing patty-cakes?