I can't tell you how many posts I've written this week that I haven't put up on this blog. Why? Because I've been practicing with three different new headsets and microphones. I'm switching up my computers.
I took down posts that were written in frustration, those that were boring, and some that were simply self-indulgent. The reality is that any technology takes work and I have no right to complain about what I had to go through this week. But for some reason when my voice recognition stops working or one of my assistive programs has to get ditched or replaced, my impatience rises to a level that's beyond words.
Whenever my ability to get words on paper temporarily gets put on hold, it goes like this: I'm beyond words and that just doesn't feel good.
My earliest memories include writing in composition books that I used to put in my closet. There were so many of them that I had to stack them in cartons. My grandmother found them and asked what I was doing and I told her I was trying to write a novel. I was about 11 years old. To my surprise she didn't laugh at me, but gave me my grandfather's typewriter that he used in World War I and suddenly my writing was condensed into typed letters, single pages that I rarely numbered in my haste to write the next American novel.
My grandfather's typewriter had keys that could bend easily, that you had to be careful when you hit them to type. It was set into a suitcase, so that you could close it in a hurry and take off because as a journalist in the war, he had to be on the run. I tried to imagine my grandfather sitting in a tent, picking out words for an article.
Now I can't even imagine the look on the face of that young soldier-journalist if he could see me sitting here talking into a microphone to a laptop that was magically forming words. Would he have words to describe that?
Perhaps. Maybe he would sit, pecking at those keys, and turn it into a great science fiction story.
One thing I do know is that what's important is about what we have to say, not the way we get it on paper or which medium we use.
I'm just grateful that I'm not beyond words, for the moment.
2 comments:
Dear Ruth, in a teensy way, I can emphathize with you, as in share some of the same feeling.
Our college decided that we would all have to use the newest version of Microsoft Office. Usually version changes are not a huge deal, but this time, they completely redesigned everything.
I've attended the training sessions; I've done the online tutorials; I've read the help information. But the long and short of it is this: some things that I do all the time now take about 20% longer. That's frustrating.
Some things that I do all of the time - like write equations for my statistics class - I cannot do at all until I learn an entirely new and very different system, for which we have been given no instructions.
There is a new meaning to "planned obsolescence" because it is me, the person, who was rendered obsolete and incompetent by the technology change. At least for the time being, I am not able to put words on paper - and I am feeling very bad about it.
There is a big difference of having an unnecessary change imposed from without and having a physical situation that imposes limitations from within - and I know that. Perhaps the silver lining in this cloud is having a moment of shared realization of being dependent and unable to control something that is central to what I need to do every day.
Dear Sr. Edith, Thanks so much for leaving a comment about the nexus of our experiences. I am coming to believe that most situations (I guess maybe not all but perhaps) have that commonality of experience, feeling, etc. and blogging comments and feedback have really gone a long way toward teaching me that.
I find that my patience is more lacking when it's work related tasks that are affected because my productivity temporarily is a bit slower - another (perhaps) shared experience there.
Take care and I hope your learning curve gets gentler.
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