Digital Life
For several years now, I have owned a MacBook Air (laptop) for writing and an iMac (desktop computer) for everything else (taxes, freelance graphic design, photo and video libraries, FAFSA paperwork for the kids, kids’ resumes & school projects, etc.). This, as you might imagine, has become very messy over the years as I would sometimes use the laptop for things I ought to be doing on the desktop and vice versa.
I would periodically attempt to get re-organized by connecting an external hard drive and moving things from computer to computer, sometimes forgetting about the stuff in limbo on the hard drive and then freaking the hell out because I couldn’t find a book draft or an entire year’s worth of phone pictures*.
*Because obviously, if I’m not utilizing some mysterious cloud service to sync my computers, why would I use it to back up my phone? Especially when Apple Photos is the WORST? (I just deleted seventeen paragraphs ranting about how great iPhotos was and how horrific Photos is. You are welcome. I have an ANCIENT iPhoto library on an external hard drive with my ENTIRE life with Eric on it and I sometimes wake up at night and have panic attacks about it because I need to figure out how to migrate it to something better and back it up before we have a house fire that destroys the hard drive and I am left bereft and sobbing until I drown in an ocean of my own tears. So no pressure at all, is what I’m saying!)
When I started working for Horrocks in 2023, they sent me a Dell laptop and two gigantic external monitors. No separate tower or box or anything.
Huh, thought I, is… is this a simpler way to live my life? And sure enough, if I have to travel, I can take one single computer along with me and have access to every work document I might need. Not once have I had to frantically call home and instruct one of my kids to zip up and email me a missing file. I mean, yes, I have to deal with Microsoft One Drive, Teams, and Sharepoint 🤮🤮, but, wow. How simple!
I wanted to mimic this set-up for my own digital life, but consolidating everything onto one personal computer felt overwhelming. When I’d open up my old MacBook Air, it would wheeze and cough, reminding me of its built-in obsolescence. No way could it handle everything crammed onto the also old and also wheezing iMac wherein I have every single design file I’ve ever done for any client ever. I mean, what if that client who once owned that business that is no longer online comes back and wants a copy of the raster logo I drew for her with my mouse in 2002? I obviously have to keep it just in case.
But then my daughter finished her ballet internship with Ballet West Academy and told me she needed a laptop for school. She moves into UVU student housing this Saturday and though she has been working very hard, does not have enough monies or student funding to cover a computer.
Well, said I, how about I finally clean up my digital life and give you one of mine?
She eyed me skeptically wondering (very deservedly, I might add) if I would be able to clean off one single computer without wanting to do the entire digital clean up project totally and completely and perfectly (as is my wont) and thus dragging it out too long, yay, even dragging it out into eternity and beyond, never completed, forever trapped in a state of perpetual abeyance.
I can do it! I promised, while chewing one fingernail to the stub.
But against all odds, I have! I’m such a good mom who never, ever, loses track of time in an ADHD hyper-focus deep dive! The very computer I’m typing on has managed to disgorge its 50 million items to the other behemoth on my desk, and is ready to be reset to its factory settings after I hit publish. Huzzah!
Amazingly, without all my shit on it (and, my children would be quick to point out, no longer struggling with sixty open tabs in every browser window), the laptop is no longer coughing and/or wheezing! It seems younger, lighter, and so much faster. I shall rename her Kris Jenner, back from the Hollywood dead with her new 30-something-looking face. (Please infer a whole sidebar post here re: impossible beauty standards and how women aren’t allowed to age along with a host of clever and insightful nuances about personal choice and the right to do whatever you want with your body and face, but also some overwrought handwringing about how that family seems to be openly supporting the fall of democracy and the rise of the oligarchy!).
ANYWAY, surely, if I throw a couple of virgin goats into the proverbial volcano, this machine will hold up for four years of academia? 🐐🌋 Yes? Please? (Probably not. It’s already a senior citizen in the world of electronics, but maybe we can get through the first year.🤞🏻)
I am, of course, ignoring the larger problem that I now have the hottest of hot messes (files, folders, photos, movies, video, etc., etc., etc.,) on the iMac. 🫠 And as someone who at least likes to keep a clean and tidy desktop, this situation is very stressful.
Ideally, I would order a new laptop, move everything over there, painstakingly organize it (while simultaneously finding a perfect cloud solution for decades of pictures and history), then ALSO clean off the iMac and sell it. Neatly consolidating my personal life into one machine that can go everywhere with me just like my work set-up! (At least until it dies its last wheezing breath in 6-8 years and I have to do the whole thing over again.)
But I’ll get to that. Eventually.
And now, links!
Hector and the Search for Happiness - Watched this on a whim and really enjoyed it. I think a lot about happiness as a concept these days and personally find it to be something that happens in moments rather than a state of being one can unlock and reside in forever. Is this the grief talking? Probably!
I rewatched Derry Girls recently and had forgotten so much! What a treasure.
I somehow managed to watch Love Life backward. I saw season 2 with William Jackson Harper first, then season 1 with Anna Kendrick. I don’t know how I managed this, but I did. I think it’s a show that kind of got lost in the pandemic and otherwise would have had more seasons. The show reaffirmed my belief that what I had with Eric was a once-in-a-lifetime thing and also validated my resolve to never put myself out there and go through the pain and disaster of connecting and dating ever again! But don’t let my grumpy widowhood sway you if you haven’t seen it. It’s full of heartwarming moments that made me cry.
I finally watched the 2018 A Star is Born. Eric watched it not too long before he died and mentioned that we should watch it together (he loved any shows with music). We never got the chance so I avoided it for a while. I somehow avoided all spoilers and had NO IDEA it was going to rip my heart out and trample it to pieces. I had myself a good long cry and went to bed with a headache and sandpaper eyes. But also, I recommend! Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are so good! But you already know this! You are not living under a weird griefy rock!
Two books I had confused feelings about after going in with super high expectations: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, and When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill. Spoilery review on the latter here, but I haven’t gathered all my thoughts on the former, yet. After loving The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I was disappointed.
It looks like readers are mixed on The Wedding People, but I enjoyed it. It deals with suicidality and depression in some pretty bold ways; the protagonist’s journey back from the brink feels somehow realistic even though the entire premise and setting is the opposite of realistic. This is a weird review, but I recommend!
I’m currently reading Loving Sylvia Plath by Emily Van Duyne, and my god, I’m so mad at my college English Lit class that upheld the idea that Plath died as a result of her own poetic genius and not because she was a domestic abuse survivor. To be fair, Ted Hughes did a stand-up job of rewriting Plath’s entire history after her death, so who knew? But UGH. Did you know about Assia Wevill? And if so, did you go to college more recently than the 1900s?