My relationship with technology

For the most part these days, I'm pretty good. I mean I've got the whole getting-out-of-bed-shower-breakfast-medication routine down pat, though it does still tend to happen a few hours after most people's mornings have begun.

I've gotten past my despairing 'life is unfair and therefore not worth partaking in' phase and have even moved past wishing horrible things upon other people just so I'd have someone to relate to about how rough it is when everybody else seems to breeze through their charmed, little lives.

There's just one teensy area of my life which if you were to observe you might believe I were not past the state of needing close supervision in an inpatient environment. And that is my relationship with technology.

I try to keep the swearing to a minimum because my nephew's bedroom is next to mine and if he can hear me snore he can probably hear me cursing, 'you worthless piece of Steve Jobs' soul, I want to throw you under a truck.'

See the thing is, between study, getting sick every five minutes and working in The Arts, I haven't had a stretch where I've been receiving a decent income for over half a decade. And that means I haven't had any money to splash around on technology. Right now my laptop, my iPad and my iPhone are all second-hand and pretty old in tech years. Now I know that in the grand scheme of things, what with having just spent five months in hospital, now having to spend one in every five weeks in hospital and not knowing when I'm going to blow a gasket next, and all this is not even taking into consideration the much larger problems that exist in the world; genocide, war, famine, whatever that stuff is that's going on in Ukraine (seriously, I was sick when it all started and now it's really challenging playing effective catch-up) it should seem pretty small fry, but my old, inadequate, built-to-be-superseded technology is bumming me out because I just can't get anything done!

My laptop, which I just upgraded from running Windows 98, was slow to begin with but then on just one occasion when I decided to live outside the rules and not wait to find out who won Season 11 of So You Think You Can Dance, I downloaded about a million viruses along with the episode from Pirate Bay. And yes, of course I have antivirus software but it seems to be useless. I've looked up about a million geek pages hoping to find some way to purge my computer of these demons but they all tell me that I need to download this software and I think some of those have actually been viruses themselves and now the viruses have somehow locked down my antivirus software and really, I don't know what to do, except maybe hang around university lecture theatres for IT courses hoping to meet a nerd who'll settle for a relationship that consists entirely of cleaning up my hard drive, holding hands and watching old Firefly episodes with me (that's really all I could handle at the moment).

So I'm doing most of my web stuff at the moment on my iPad. But since it's 5 years old, which is like 90 in Apple years, it's just a temperamental little fucker that fails me more often than not. It literally just shuts down every 3 minutes. The best advice the interweb can offer me is to make sure there aren't too many apps running at once (nope, just one. Safari, you know, that one that came with the iPad) or otherwise to buy a new iPad (thanks Apple forum, you cultish home to douches).

So my most reliable gadget for the myriad of things one must do on the Internet these days to be a part of modern society is my iPhone 4. And while it doesn't automatically redirect me to sites where I can 'learn how to earn $3847 a week like this single mom' or usually drop out just after I've put in all my credit card details but before I've hit confirm, web browsing is not really optimised for the iPhone screen. It's so tiny and my eyesight's poor and I'm becoming paranoid that I must have obese finger pads. And mobile optimised sites are just the worst! They almost always abandon every practical function you might want in a web page and instead insert you into generic, unhelpful loops which results in me stamping my feet like a toddler, crying 'Nooooo!!!' and angrily throwing my phone as softly as I can on to my bed (I'm so angry, but I also don't want to break my phone. It's the most reliable technology I've got).

Anyway, I guess the point I was trying to get at is that it's harder to blog than it should be. This post took 3 devices, 2 hours and all of my patience. It's harder for me to repin witty Sherlock in jokes on Pinterest because the writing is too tiny for me to read on my iPhone. It's harder for me to win online arguments with Daily Telegraph readers about the Disability Support Pension going to "bludgers who say they got like mental probs but u can't even prove that lol" when my browser just shuts down, deleting my 7 paragraph scathing response.

So what I'm thinking is I should start a charity collecting functional technology to give to the mentally ill so that we can all commune online and give each other support, as well as buy socks without having to leave the house. If you're interested in donating please comment below. Your reward will be more rambling posts such as this. Dig deep. 

Switch off, unplug, breathe deep

My mood was great today. I woke up feeling spritely, had enough time to drink a cup of coffee AND put mascara on, I was heading out the door when my uncle asked if I wanted a lift to work so rather than being smashed into the armpit of a sweaty man on a crowded tram I was driven to work while listening to the radio so I caught up on the news of the world on the way. Arriving half an hour early I got a jumpstart on the day, went across to ACCA and got a truly exceptional coffee, started my work properly for the day and then it just flew by as I immersed myself in learning about reporting (remember previous post about how I heart excel spreadsheets? These things excite me). I left work early and came home to cook spaghetti bolognese which turned out exceptionally well if I do say so myself, then I had a fantastic long chat with my cousin. Watched a bit of Elementary on the telly then came upstairs and picked up my iPad.

Whoosh!

That was the sound of my good mood vanishing.

What is it with the fucking Internet? There's a troll on my favourite feminist board on Pinterest and usually I can step back and say to myself "Katie, this person is an idiot, stop reading the comments" but tonight I just kept reading them and then it was like I was seeking them out just to get more and more red in the face and upset. I wanted to have a reaction that meant something, that did something but there was nothing I could do. I'd start writing responses to his boorish remarks but then I'd realise they weren't enough and they showed I cared what he thought, which is not the case, but I care about the spaces in which I get to share ideas and have a dialogue about the things I do care about.

Then I went onto Facebook, which I generally avoid since I know it makes me dislike people I actually know and there were all kinds of asinine commentaries on yesterday's leadership spill mixed in amongst the other usual self important and inane crap. I felt frustrated.

Even though my head is loopy and my good mood probably has everything to do with the fact that I actually can't remember anything at the moment, I do still have a fairly formidable mind. I am a university drop out because I wasn't receiving the kind of stimulation I craved in the classroom and I am still craving it. Next weekend there is a conference at The University of Melbourne run by the Socialist Alternative called Marxism. I had been interested in attending it when I heard that Brian Jones was going to be performing Howard Zinn's 'Marx in Soho', a text I read while in the US. Further reading of the program and some correspondence with my ex-boyfriend, the socialist, informed me of a series of discussions being held about education. I'm very tempted to attend. Part of me thinks or perhaps hopes that I might find some satiating material to appease my needy mind. Then there's a part of me that concludes that all trolls or Facebook users are actually people and these people may be the ones attending this conference in which case I'll be surrounded by voices that make my blood boil and it would be better really to stay home in bed.

I don't know what the answer is. I think for a short while anyway I should give the internet a break. Definitely for at least one day, maybe the whole weekend. That's it, it's a ludite weekend. See you on the other side.

(ok, I have to tell you, my iPad changed ludite to ludicrous. Is that an Apple commentary?)