Day 357. Hell No

I’m fine with admitting I wasn’t an early adopter.  My first computer sat, collecting dust, on a typing table in my office for months and months before I finally gave it a try.  Relax, it was 1985.   I’m also the first to admit there are days when I’d like to throw my laptop off the balcony.

But all that aside, make no mistake about it.  I’m addicted.  I could no more live without my computer than fly to the moon.  Well, maybe that’s not such a good example any more.  Richard Branson’s selling seats already.

Doesn’t matter.  I won’t be on that flight.  So the example stands.  And I won’t be giving up my computer any time soon.  Not willingly, anyway.

Which does beg the question, “Why, then, am I bothering to respond to yesterday’s WordPress Daily Prompt?:  “Your life without a computer:  what does it look like?”

Because I thought I’d turn it around.  Talk about it from the other perspective.  As someone for whom there would be no life without a computer.  Not that I couldn’t have a life.  I’m sure I could.  I just wouldn’t want it.

So now you think I’m really sick, don’t you?  One of those Type A’s.  In real need of help.  An intervention.  Intense therapy.  A month or two at Betty Ford.

Well, maybe I do.  But I’m not going without my laptop.

Yeah, I’m that bad.

My computer has become an extension of me.  Another hand, if you will.  It’s another limb.  Attached to my finger tips.  Yes, it dangles from my fingertips. Plus, my brain doesn’t function without it.  In fact, I’m convinced when I wasn’t looking, somebody replaced my brain with my computer’s hard drive.  “No, I don’t know who.  Dr. No, what do I know”.   I can’t finish a sentence on my own.  Hell, most of the time I can’t start one on my own, either.

What’s a writer supposed to do without the ability to form a sentence?  Have you ever heard of a sentence-less writer?

Get a typewriter?  Are you mad?  What century are you in?  When was the last time you saw a typewriter?  In a museum?

Write in longhand?  Why am I even wasting my time with you?

And think of the mess there’d be, without my computer.  The clutter everywhere.  I’d have to have an address book.  And a calendar.  And an appointment book.  And message pads.  And a calculator.  And stacks and stacks of CDs laying about everywhere.  And reams and reams of paper all over the place.  And pencils.  And pens.  And markers.  And erasers.  And 3-hole punches.  And rulers.  And staplers.  And staples.  And paper clips, of every size.  And dictionaries.  And a thesaurus.  And Bartlett’s Quotations.  And encyclopedias.  And style guides.  And reference books on every subject you can think of.  And photo albums.  My God, I took 5,000 pictures in India, alone.  How many albums is that?  And file folders.  And filing cabinets.

Bet you I’ve forgotten stuff.  God knows how much crap there’d be around here.  My cleaning lady would quit in disgust.  I’d never be able to downsize.  I’d need even more rooms than I have now.

It’s a nightmare!

Oh, and it gets worse.  I wouldn’t be able to blog.  We’d have never met each other.  How would I keep in touch with anyone?  My long distance phone bill would be sky high.  And what about all the research I have to do, as a writer.

As it stands now, I can Google Search for anything, anything at all; and in minutes I have all the information I need to write anything.  I was a copywriter before the Internet.  I remember what it was like.  We’d have to go to the library.  Nothing wrong with libraries.  I love libraries.  But we’d be there for hours and hours and hours.  Sometimes several days in a row.

Who has time for that now?  Deadlines are brutal.

You know, I’m giving myself an anxiety attack.  I can feel myself starting to hyperventilate.  Can you just hang on a minute while I go look for a paper bag?