Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Life without the computer

My routine, if I have such a thing, is to get up very early in the morning and go downstairs to my office. Chris and the cat, saner beings than I, are still sound asleep. I turn on my computer and get to work.

This is my time, where I've given myself permission to experiment with my photos, no worries about what I should be doing. Just me, bending, folding, spindling and mutilating pictures. Sometimes something terrific is the result; more often, something mediocre happens. No matter. It's all part of the learning/experimenting process.

About three hours later, around 6, Chris and the cat are up and my "real" day begins.

So you can imagine how weird it is to not have the computer available for days. No way to poke around, to try this or that, to merge pictures, to create something. That was the case last week and has been the case yesterday and today.

There's no comforting hum from the computer, no rumbling from the Drobo as it moves images from drive to drive. The clock ticks and that is all.

I was hoping that the above could be a blog post, but no, it's a whiny self-absorbed piece about how cranky I am without the computer . . .

People are out of work and homeless and here I am moaning about how I can't blend a photo of a boat hull with a photo of the letter "S." Do I have NO sense of perspective?

So yes, this is a blog post after all, reminding you, reminding me, that we're pretty darned lucky beings and to think twice before whining that our coffee's not hot enough, that traffic isn't moving fast enough, or that you have to live 48 hours without a computer. ©Carol Leigh

P.S. Yes, I know I'm using a computer to do this, and the photo above is from 2009, but it's an old photo, and this is a laptop, not what I consider a real computer. And I have to use a mouse, not my Wacom tablet. Oh, poor, poor, pitiful me!  :-)