Being streamlined is for the birds

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Updated Jun 14, 2017

I’ve henceforth decided to shake off all efforts to become “streamlined,” and remain lumpy, non-aerodynamic, and scrap paper filled. Here’s why:

In an effort to drag myself into the future, I’ve recently become pretty handy with my little smartphone. I can take a picture and make notes right on the screen about where it is and what kind of story I want to write about it. I can record phone calls, and have no need for notes when I’m talking to someone fascinating, because I can go back and listen to the story as many times as I like. I’m going to admit, having less junk to drag around in the truck has been awesome, and my desk at home has plenty of room for rubber gorillas and magic lamps on it.

I sallied along, in my smartphone world, enjoying the ease and sheer laziness of it. I even found out how to make it record me, without having to press any buttons. Sloth is nothing compared to the sins you can commit with a smartphone, believe me. Also, never tell your phone verbally to look up “loggerhead turtle.” Just don’t.

I was blithely swiping through my 1,500 pictures yesterday, deciding which story to expand on when tragedy struck. I dropped my little nugget of wisdom, and her little face became a screen of blackness, and she refused to come on again. I immediately handed her to George, the electronics whisperer. He has a plate in his head, is half alien and can make most electronic devices recognize his prowess with anything button-y.

The black screen of deathThe black screen of death

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“Make it work.”

“Make it work how?”

“Make it work like it’s supposed to. With a screen and stuff.”

“What did you do to it?”

“I dropped it.”

“You broke it.”

“That’s not possible, I have all my notes and stories on it for the month.”

“It is possible, you broke it. You better write another story.”

“This isn’t really happening.”

“It’s happening, because I can’t even get it to do a hard reset.”

“Well, do a soft one! You’re making her scared by doing a hard one!! Don’t say loggerhead turtle!”

“I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, but your phone is broken. We’ll have to go to the Verizon store tomorrow and see what we can do.”

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This is the point in the story where I gather all my pens, notebooks and scraps of paper, and go outside into the snow and lay down. Not really, but it’s exactly what I felt like doing. To hell with all this technology. If I had dropped my notebook, the worst that could have happened was it might fly open to the page I attempted to sketch a bison on (which, incidentally, looks very much like a giant pile of poop), or I would have broken a pen, but I wouldn’t have lost everything.

As it stands now, I can recover most of the notes and pictures from the cloud, which may as well be called The Borg, because apparently it knows everything. But I’ll have to wait until someone can help me get to the cloud (do we call them angels?) before I can recover.

Technology has its place in life, but life itself isn’t it. Sometimes, it’s hard to strike a balance.

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