It’s rare, but that’s often what makes things so special. Because of the way my mind works, I can’t have background music on when I work. My concentration suffers. The only real exception is when I have a mindless, repetitive work task that I have to do that lasts for an hour or more. Then I can slip on the phones and start up Spotify. I can only afford so many premium accounts, so I have the free version. That means ads. The thing about Spotify ads is that they too are repetitive. I guess that’s how marketing people try to get things stuck in your head. I can remember many jingles from childhood. Mostly for products I never use, and a few from products that no longer exist. They live on in memory.
The other day I had a repetitive task to do that was aided by a lack of early emails at work, so I was able to begin shortly after login. You see, I tend to start work before seven. An early riser, I like to work when I’m still able to concentrate well. I had the headphones on and was listening to Spotify. One of the ads, about insomnia (ahem), started out by stating they had to choose between a daytime ad and a nighttime ad. They said something like “obviously we chose nighttime.” It was seven a.m. The sun was up. Some of us were already at work. Since my task took several hours, I was still at it after nine a.m. when the ad switched to its daytime version. So night now lasts until work starts? Whatever happened to dawn?
Perhaps the ads come from a different time zone. Some of them are regionally specific, though. Work defines much of our lives, and it also seems to dictate when Spotify switches to its daytime advertising. For those of us who wake early, dawn is an almost magical time. It has been many years now since I’ve awoken to find it light outside. Although I get quite a lot of my personal work done before starting my paid job, I still keep an eye out for the first lightening of the sky. At some times of the year, before the autumnal equinox sets in, it signals the time for my jog to start. In September that gets delayed to 6:30 when many others are out and my work’s about to begin. If I happen to be listening to Spotify when I start work, they’ll confirm I should still be sleeping. Instead, I embrace the dawn.