NORMAL LIFE: Me & My Gay i-Pod Are Conforming

One thing that has amazed me this year is that, at the age of thirty, I find myself conforming to things that I wouldn't want to conform to, as if feeling like I didn't have a choice. Of course, we all have choices, but that's the thing: such is the pressure that you somehow feel you should do something.

It all started well before Friends Reunited came on the scene, marketed as a fun way to track down old school friends and colleagues. There have been alot of copycats since then, but none so effective as Facebook (for socialising) and LinkedIn (for professional purposes).

I have joined all three online spaces and got very little out of each experience so, recently, I decided to conform to something a little bit more concrete. Using an online reward I had received from my acting manager (why does everything have to be so virtual?), I bought an iPod. My initial experience with the iPod was that it was very disappointing, but now that I have camped it up with some audio-visuals - by decrypting and converting my DVDs to MP4 format - ranging from Erasure to Madonna, Celine Dion to the one and only Kylie Minogue, I'm as happy as a pig in shit!

One thing is still missing though. Yes, I have managed to get my music onto the device and, yes, I have managed to add my favourite DVDs, but why oh why have Apple prevented users from adding their own folder names? For example, I would like to use my iPod as a secondary storage base for my thousands of beloved photos, but I'll be damned if Apple expect me to just dump all the photos into one big folder, making it impossible to find a particular shot. What's the point in that? Or is that they just expect me to invest in a Mac so I can do that? Perhaps I should tap the boss for another online reward?