Still the podlist dwindles

Last week I made a comment that my podcast listening queue has been reduced from over thirty shows down to around thirteen.  Now it’s down to eleven.

I have so much trouble cutting these things out of my life.  I’ve been listening for so long that I feel invested in them.  I just can’t bring myself to break up with them.  But I have to form some strong new habits, letting go of things that have no use to me and retain nothing but “I used to like it” value have got to go.

I remember as a child (and LONG before I knew what Animism was) I used to assign living qualities to inanimate objects.  I’d see a rock and start talking to it.  On the way out to school I’d say good morning, on the way home I’d ask it how its day was.  I’d make sure not to run it over with my bike.  I’d apologize to the tree if I broke a limb while climbing it and from then on I would talk to the tree and ask it about its kids (all the smaller trees in the area) out of obligation because I had injured it.  I even imagined the car was alive and when my parents gave it gas it was like feeding a pet.  When the rock went missing, the tree died or when we traded in the car, I would get sad because I thought they were alive somehow.  And it was really hard to get over that, I still have a latent desire to animate all the stuff around me…
You know, after typing that out, I really have to re-evaluate how much of my life I should lay out here in the open like this.  Imaginary friends are one thing but I sound like a fucking nutbag here…
But the point is, I get attached to things and I find it difficult to let go.  (Holy shit, I am in therapy here aren’t I?)  The podcasts I listen to are a lot like that.  I have trouble hitting that “Unsubscribe” button.  But I have to.

Reasoning for dropping one of the shows:
Hosts A, B and C talk about interesting geeky things, movies and comics.  The show is fun for a while until it suddenly dies.  It comes back to life with a name change and the exit of host C.  Hosts A and B introduce occasional host D.  D is a fucking idiot.  Listening to him pretend to be a geek is painful.  Just about EVERYthing he EVER says is an immediate repeat of host A’s comment or a catchphrase.  Plus, he’s a fitness freak so now we get a new segment to the show all about working out and eating healthy.  Host B has faded from the show and only occasionally shows up.  So to fill the chair we get host A’s wife.  She fully admits she’s not really geeky and that makes her instantly cooler than D who is still pretending.  The show is now host A, A’s wife, D and almost never B.  The show is creeping away from interesting geeky stuff to overblown catch phrases and a lot of talk about mainstream network television shows I don’t care about.
I have got to let this one go.  They pulled another podfade over the holidays and they tried to keep it up with solo shows by host D that were just unlistenable.  I just got caught up on their first show of the new year and as much as I like the movie they were talking about, I barely got through the front end to the content.  As much as I used to love the show, it is no longer the same show I used to love.

After outlining the reasons, it is clear that I no longer enjoy the show.  I have billions of things I could fill that time slot with.  So now I wonder, what do I do?  I just delete the feed from iTunes and it goes away.  But what about the rest of the shows?  At what standard am I drawing the line of “this is good, that is crap”?  How many of the other show have to start worrying about getting cut from the list?  Strange torture I put myself through over something as simple as a podcast…  If I like it, listen to it.  If I don’t like it, delete it.  Why is this so damn hard for me?