Humans have questioned “Who Am I” as far back in our history as we first discovered we had a navel and could gaze upon it. Since then, the philosophers and prognosticators and teen-agers everywhere have come to one and only one conclusion:
Do define myself by my relationships? By my likes and dislikes? By the number of followers I have on TikTok (don’t even have an account)? By my past? Future? Hopes? Fears? By my employment? By my religion?
The past couple of months I have found myself adrift in a very strange place: one without my computer. It was crashing like a lead-footed blind man at Daytona! I thought it was a virus, then maybe a windows update snafu, then maybe a windows defender snafu (windows has a lot of snafu’s). I thought maybe I had a adblock issue, then a competing issue with my security software. I couldn’t go on line at all or the computer would crash. I struggled with it for a couple of months until I finally gave up and did a full factory image wipe. And, let’s be clear, I’m not Scottie. When I do a wipe I may as well have taken a sledgehammer to it because whatever that computer was is gone.
There went my favorite websites. My ways of spending time not working – even when I should have been working – were gone. I mean, who remembers all their passwords!?! I’ve got sites I’ve been going to for years that I put on a ridiculous password and saved it on the computer to never bother remembering it again. And they were all gone. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do with my time now! I can’t tell you how stressful this was, and how dumb I felt feeling stressed about it.
So, I started reading more, and I mean a lot more. I went on a diet. I had a lot of work going on at my parent’s place and I started taking care of my own better. I cleaned my kitchen every day, my bathroom 3-times a week, kept caught up on laundry and even sorted through some of the junk I’ve allowed to pile up. I mowed the lawn and got rid of a pile of downed branches I had reserved for “later” (I have a lot of those “later” things – stuff I’ll take care of, ya know, … later). I didn’t even come into my office anymore. I was actually eating at the diningroom table! I know – sacrilege!
So, on Tuesday I began the work of putting this computer back together again, of re-establishing my very identity. Now, today, as I write this it’s Friday, the sink is full, laundry on the floor, dirty towels in the bathroom, I have a dirty plate and cup of cold coffee stagnating on my desk that I keep bumping with my elbow and somehow my life is now “right”. Truly, I found how the other folks live and I didn’t like it!
One thing I did also learn in all of this: I restarted Google and when I signed in I was presented with a number of bookmarked sites that I haven’t seen in years. A good third of them didn’t even exist anymore. Folks, let me tell you – Google Never Forgets! But, it’s nice to visit who I used to be 🙂
Hugs
-randy
Scottie's Playtime 