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When I got my new iPad and Apple announced the upcoming Newsstand application, I made a conscious decision to not buy any more paper magazines. The reading experience on the iPad is fantastic. (For ME . . . calm down Kindle owners, yes, reading an iPad in the bright sunlight sucks. But I live in Western Washington. This is NOT an issue.) I was subscribing to I think at the time 6 or 7 magazines. Runner’s world, Triathlete, Bicycling, Wired, Handy, Realtor, etc. etc. And every month, I’d end up with a stack of magazines next to the bath tub. (I read in the bath tub, it’s where I go to unwind. Don’t hate.) Sometimes 2 and 3 months worth would pile up there without hardly a dog ear. Eventually the guilt of spending so much money on that stack of magazines would get to me and I would take a 3 or 4 hour long bath (no I’m not kidding) just to get through them all. Mind you I wouldn’t read every word of every magazine, but I’d read enough that I could justify throwing it in the recycle bin.

Now that I get most of my magazines on iPad (Realtor doesn’t come in electronic version yet and I have a lifetime subscription to Handy) I still read in the bath tub. Yes, I’m sure there will come a day when I fall asleep reading with my iPad in my hand and I’ll fry it. But with the iPad, the magazines don’t stack up. Instead the Newsstand application pops up a little “1” or “2” in the corner to let you know you have new issues. (Hmmm too bad my therapist didn’t have notification center). Now instead of the magazines piling up on the tub, the notifications keep piling up on my icon. I HAVE been better about reading my magazines. They don’t get much past a month without being read or at the very least downloaded so I have them when I want to read them. And the money guilt is slowly going away because like everything else in the world, my magazines will just auto-renew through my iTunes account. Another $19 bucks here and another $21.99 there. As Pink Floyd says “Just a little pinprick. There’ll be no more aahhhh! But you may feel a little sick.”

And I guess that’ll be another blog post for me to rant about, our subscription based society. I remember when you could buy things and actually OWN them. Not just rent them for awhile.

At least I’m not killing as many trees…