Two weekends back, as celebration for closing out Long Tail’s first round of financing, I bought myself an iPod Shuffle.

Ostensibly, I bought it to take to the gym, because professional bodybuilders (a significant part of Mid City Gym’s clientelle) apparently have musical taste on par with their fashion sense (way to keep Zubaz pants alive, guys!), and because my trusty 60-gig model weighs enough that I unintentionally occasionally pants myself when moving quickly while carrying it in my gym shorts pocket.

I assumed I’d still use the 60-gig outside of the gym, as I’ve by now filled it to near capacity with a full month of tunes. But, it turns out, even really, really long subway rides (read: going to Brooklyn) are shorter than a month. And during most of them, I put the 60-gig on shuffle anyway, chunking through unexpected swaths of my collection.

So, since I shuffle most of the time anyway, and since I tend to head out for just a few hours at a time, I decided to try taking the Shuffle with me around town, instead of its big brother.

My conclusion: the Shuffle is, well, small. Small enough to be virtually weightless, to leave no strange bulge when pocketed rather than messenger-bagged. And, most importantly, small enough to encourage me to carry it literally all the time, rather than just on certain bag-carrying long-tripping occasions.

So now, full-time, I wander the streets earphones-in. I can barely hear the sounds of the city around me, and I miss them far less than I’d have ever thought.