The image that I seem to have given everybody of my total abstinence from the ‘Net for the last week has been a little misleading. My roommate happened to have a spare computer somewhere in his closet that I’ve been using for the bare essentials. It’s actually a quaint little piece: it has a cute little wind-up key in the front you have to turn three times to get it to boot up. To connect to the internet, I have an empty can I set on the cable moden and a little string I run back to the computer.
I can check my mail and read Schlock Mercenary. The rest is just too much effort.
I also have pretty good internet access from work, and with my new job, I have enough time to additionally check my bank ballance and verify that I am, in fact, more broke than I have been at any other time in my life. I had more disposable funds than this when I was 12. (That wasn’t a joke–I had a nice little outfit going when I was 12.)
Things are, however, looking up for me. My new job is everything that I had hoped and imagined, which is to say, it’s a big hairy mess–but a fun mess. I’m the low rung on the ladder, but I’m mostly in the thick of things, being sent on errors, and generally the only person in my office who gets to meet people from other offices. I make stupid mistakes and correct most of them before they get caught.
As I was getting stuff moved from one cubicle to the other, and getting permissions for all my new responsibilities, I had several opportunities to run in with some of the IS crew. One of them told me he was surprised I had taken the position I took, since there were several positions open in his department that he was sure I was qualified for. I felt this was a very great compliment, considering I had just single-handedly obliterated the entire insides of my own computer.
Speaking of which, my computer is now in the capable hands of my fiance’s father. He’s an old school pro at this sort of thing. He doesn’t cut any corners, righ up to actually unpluging the machine and running a ground wire before doing surgery.
As far as I can tell, though, it was a lost cause in my case. The only thing that seems to be left is the case and a CD player. The motherboard, processor, two hard drives, and the power supply, all toast. I have no idea how this happened. It seems oddly suspicious that they would all go out at once like that. What I do know is that I have no money at my disposal with which to pay for all those computer parts. Valerie’s dad has been most understanding: he has agreed to take care of everything himself and merely take payment out of my hide. It’s the standard contract: seven years of indentured servitude. My only satisfaction is in the sure knowledge that Valerie does not have an older sister.
Life without a computer has been very surreal for me. I come home and find that there is little left to do. I make some dinner, grab a book, read a little, and collapse into bed: a very simple, orderly, ordinary day. Granted, part of that is that I’m still recovering from two months working the night shift, but I think there’s something more to this than the fact that I’ve finally removed that thick blanket from off my window.
Last year, during the height of the war, I had my radio perpetually set to NPR, mostly because it was the only radio station my car could pick up, and I was bored of all my CD’s. But if you eat a food long enough, it begins to find a way into your cravings, and you begin to desire something you never before really hungered for. I knew I had passed some sort of barrier when I was listening to their saturday news-gameshow and answered nearly every question right. As I smiled and nodded to their jibes, I realized I had become a current events junkie. And then, like too many concurrent bowls of strawberry ice cream, the flavor was gone for me. Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to just keep listening until all the important events stop happening. It’s their job to go around making sure that something important is happening. Instead, I discovered that even the important things weren’t really all that important.
They’re just events. They keep on happening. Only the cast and setting change.
I think I’ve had the same sort of revelation forced on me by my recent Net hiatus. I had been frantically scrounging around, looking for good new blogs to read, trying to say something important enough to get mentioned on blogs4God, trying to be a big dog, noticing to get noticed, discussing ideas that other people were discussing. Being forced away helped me to realize that all of it is a bit of a vanity. It’s not like they’re saying anything new. All the Evangelicals are saying evangelical things, and all the Catholics are saying Catholic things, and all the Republicans are saying Republican things. All the business sites are just oozing with free prize inside and this radical new concept called transparency. And I’m not any of those things. I don’t suppose I’m necessarily against any of them, but there’s really no need for me to discuss whether Saved! is a movie worth seeing. The only reason I might discuss such a thing is that other people are interested in it. And I like people.
I like people. But attempting to clamor because they’re clammoring is a pretty silly thing. I’m just not a clammerer(…er). I’ve got too much C.S. Lewis in me for that and not enough G.K. Chesterton. I’m fonder of ideas than of finangling.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to go from here and place some oath on myself to only write a certain way. Studying all these other people has already had the effect of putting too many limiters on what I do and say, while I tried to find some essential standard. What I’ve done is simply to rediscover what I knew before: that I find books far more fascinating than newspapers.
neumatikos 