Unplugged

Even in El Valle, at 8,000 feet, it’s been hot. So I planned to do some big-time weeding in my garden in the early morning when the hoop house throws some shade over my mess of bind weed, mallow, and grass. Instead, I spent that time trying to transfer information from my old laptop to my new used laptop (thank you, Jake Kosek) for all the editing jobs I’m doing, track down a UPS package that I thought was being shipped by the post office (see Marginalization blog), change the bank account on my electronic billing (my community bank got taken over by a multi-national), and answer a bunch of e-mails that needed answering. As I’m doing all this I’m keeping up a steady stream of complaint: I don’t want to be doing this, why am I doing this, computers are making my life more complicated (see The Scourge of Computers blog), not less, I can’t believe I’m talking to myself like this, I want to go back to my life before I had a computer.

I often think of my pre-computer life. I certainly was just as busy as I am today, but I was busy doing other things like building a house, raising children, fighting the Forest Service (a life’s work), gardening, knitting (I actually knit the kids and Mark sweaters and hats), writing stories (on the typewriter), fighting the developers (also a life’s work), and taking trips to Mexico and the mountains (see Productivity blog). I was younger, and had more energy, but it was also easier to generate that energy because my efforts produced something other than the busyness required to keep up with the bureaucratic bullshit that has taken over our lives.

Let’s take a closer look at the things I was doing that morning. Why in the world do I need two laptop computers? I have a hard drive back-up for all my important papers (two novels, a book of short stories, a memoir of my political activity in northern New Mexico, all unpublished) and other files, but you know how it goes: my old laptop is slow, it won’t run any of the constantly upgraded applications that Apple is constantly turning out so people have to spend more money to buy new computers, which means you have to buy one too or you can’t communicate and everyone tells you you’re a Luddite. After two sessions with my computer guru, Robin Collier, there is still stuff that hasn’t been transferred off the old to the new, and glitches that I’m still discovering on the new that make me run back to the old (or up to the old, as it’s upstairs and the new one is downstairs), cursing all the way.

Then I happen to look at my e-mail and realize that a package that I thought was mailed to me on July 27 and expected to arrive in three to five days was actually UPS’d to me and of course I’d provided the postal mailing address, not the UPS address. So I call the UPS center in Santa Fe (fortunately, the last time I managed to find the number, which is not listed in the phone book because they make you call a centralized number in anywhere U.S.A. that can only help you if you have a tracking number, I had the presence of mind to write it down) and give them the correct physical address (my mailing address is a physical address as well, but neither deliverer will recognize the other’s).

Moving on to the next distraction, I find myself once more on the computer trying to pay my credit card bill only to see that my old bank, the one I specifically chose because it was local, is still listed as the payer when it’s been taken over by some multi-national bank I’ve never even heard of because of the mortgage crisis. The new bank sends me about five letters a week explaining how this takeover is being handled and what I have to do and what I don’t have to do, which is change any electronic payment information because the new bank is going to take care of that. But of course it hasn’t and I’m worried that my payment won’t be correctly processed and the credit card company will charge me interest, which is usury, so I decide to make the change myself, which I can’t figure out how to do online, of course, so I have to call the credit card company and have someone walk me through it and then that’s done.

Lastly are the e-mails. Normally I don’t complain about e-mails. I know that some people get hundreds of them every day and end up throwing most of them in the trash. Of all the technological innovations associated with the computer I appreciate e-mail the most because it means I can impart information or ask a question or have a short chat without getting bogged down on the phone with certain friends who will remain nameless who think that anytime you call it’s an excuse to talk for an hour about much more than the purpose of the call. But you still have that nagging feeling that you need to read all those e-mails pertaining to your work or your political awareness and then like everyone else you throw them in the trash.

This posting is full of a lot of “see other blogs,” which may indicate that it’s redundant, but I think it’s more a reaffirmation of the need to chafe and complain and yes, even rant, about the bullshit we, the few and the privileged (see Some Things Are Relative blog) put up with, and really, promote, in this short time we have on earth. I remember a backpack trip long ago, walking the crest trail in the Manzano Mountains, thinking, I wish I could walk this trail forever and never go back. Sometimes it’s just all too much.