I have had quite a few iPods over the past few years but the one I currently use is just the one I treasure the most. This is not one from the latest generation or the very first one released either. It does not have 160 Go of memory but a mere 4 Go. It is not a fancy iPod touch but an iPod nano I bought four years ago in one of those massive and impersonal Canadian superstores. Since then, it travelled the world at my side.

To be honest, it starts to look a little old when you compare it to the latest generation ones. Nevertheless, this is only a secondary issue. What is so special about it is not its appearance but what really is in the inside – like beauty right?

To start with, I am not exactly the type of person storing an infinite number of albums in my iPod. I generally enjoy a limited number of songs from the same artist or from the same album or from the same genre and these are exactly the ones I want to be with me at any point of time. It also sometimes happens that you discover a song that you like years after you first heard it. It might have even made it into your iPod at some point before being dramatically erased from its limited memory. Back in the days, you were probably not mature enough to really enjoy what was so special about it. Inversely, you sometimes think you actually like a song and put it into your all-mighty iPod straight away but then realised after a few days that you actually do not like it LIKE IT. And so it needs to be erased and forgotten for the rest of your existence.

In a word, building a perfectly optimised playlist is a complex and never ending process involving a constant flow of more or less great and more or less famous songs coming in and out of the device. Trust me, the ultimate goal of this sometimes tedious process is worth the efforts. In the end, the iPod you will eventually adore will simply contain all of those songs exactly matching your unique moods and all of the events punctuating your unique life. You will have exactly the songs that reflect your very own personality and your very own life – for the best and for the worst. Today, after years of efforts and countless nights of synchronisation, my iPod is finally optimised and losing it would be like losing a little part of me.