I am a damned fool.

There are things I truly, deeply, hate about myself. One, is that I always think I know the best way to do anything. And 9 times out of 10 that bites me in the ass.

I have now completely destroyed my beautiful iPod nano. I'm nearly in tears over it.

It was starting to show it's wear, and I thought I would shine it up a little. (I take pride in keeping my toys looking nice.) So I did what I always do when I need to shine something made of plastic, I got out my container of acrylic polish. I've used it before, and it always keeps my nano looking nice and new.

Not this time. This time I managed to get a little dribble of polish in the click wheel, which made it partially stop functioning. I couldn't believe it - The slider still worked but one of the four touch points didn't respond. I panicked.

So I found a video online that showed how to disassemble them, and I opened it up thinking that I could clean it up inside. It wasn't just mucked up, it was damaged. And when I tried to put it back together I damaged it further. It will never function again. I haven't even had it a year.

I'm so sad, and so ashamed. I can't keep anything nice for any length of time. The worst part is that I'm not careless with my things, but am trying to care for them well. I've stripped paint off of the Saturn trying to remove tree sap, and I've scratched my bathtub trying to clean some old stains. I try so hard to take care of the things I treasure properly but I always end up doing more harm than good.

I'm going to replace it, because:

1. I've often admired the new version of the nano. It fixes a lot of things that bothered me about mine, but I didn't see a reason to upgrade. Not for that price, anyway. I always would have liked one, but had no intention of replacing mine.
2. Every time I want to listen to my iPod but can't, I will feel small and hot and stupid. I'd rather just pay the money and not go without than put myself through that every day.

I don't even know why the scratches bothered me anyway. It's hardly ever outside one of the many, many protective cases I bought. And now I sit, exhausted, upset, and feeling very, very foolish.

-iRob