I lead a fairly simple life, for a city girl. My partner and I are slowly but surely uncluttering our lives, our home, and our brains. We don’t tend to buy a lot of consumer goods (not always difficult, since we’re not usually marketed to directly.) Living frugally is not really a choice at the moment, either, unless we want to rack up huge credit card debt, so I’ve been avoiding planning any large purchases that don’t have anything to do with my impending career change.

But last week, one of my colleagues at massage school shared some excellent news with me. He knows that I live my other life as a web developer, and since I’m tech-savvy, he knew I’d appreciate the new toy he’s bought for himself: his new iPod Touch.

(Actually, he bought a pair: one for him, and one for his wife. Very cute.)

Cue the choruses of angels! That thing can play music, sure, but it can also play videos with great definition, keep track of appointments, surf the web wirelessly — it seems like it’s got all of the stuff the iPhone has, minus the phone functionality. And I want it. Badly.

It’s not that the iPod Touch is a status symbol, though of course that’s true; rather, my current iPod is more than a few years old — a dinosaur when you’re talking about technology — and is dying a slow, excruciating death. There’s no battery life left, so I have to keep in plugged in most of the time. It will stop playing during songs for no apparent reason. It will reboot randomly. Sometimes it won’t even turn on.

Understand, I use my iPod near-constantly. I use it in the car, during my long commutes to school. I plug it into external speakers when giving massage or during dance practice. During breaks at school, I plug my headphones into it and slide into my own little world. I take my iPod with me on walks. I listen to it while doing my computer work. I even use it as a backup hard drive for my laptop.

It’s omnipresent in my life, and it’s about to move on to the great Apple Store in the sky. (Actually, according to the iPod Death Clock, I’m cheating death with every second.)

Sure, I could replace the music player functionality with a smaller piece of technology. The iPod Nano is a decent choice, I suppose, and would serve some of my music player needs. I wouldn’t be able to keep all of my music on there, but I could put together a few playlists, and it would be just fine.

But I want the fancy one. I can make all kinds of rationalizations why the iPod Touch would be great: the external hard drive, the calendar and internet functions, the ability to watch video with my dance troupe. Having that sexy little piece of technology in my pocket would mean I wouldn’t have to travel with my laptop quite so much.

But realistically, at the end of the day, it’s about sheer, unadulterated lust. And I just don’t need yet another material thing cluttering up my world. I also don’t need the additional debt cluttering up my financial life.

So what will I do? I’ll probably pay off my debt, continue to live frugally, and move through my life pretending as if the iPod Touch never existed, just like I was doing before my colleague let me play with his.

And then, when my current iPod dies, I’ll go get the sexiest new technology I can find!