Thursday, June 3, 2010

Laptop lives

I would say that to some extent today has been productive. While I only have applied for one job today; I genuinely felt that I had suffered and endured challenges and tests of very different natures.

1. Panic, calm, innovation and success. Today I woke up to a laptop problem. I rushed through an ad hoc set of procedures to resolve this issue. i considered finding a replacement laptop in the house, which itself took me to very interesting emotional territory. I was brought face to face with the computers of yesterday that I had once made an intimate bond with. Each of those computers had different meanings for me. My first laptop was 'borrowed' from my dad. My dad bought a really super advanced toshiba laptop back in about 2003 or 2004. By those standards it was very advanced. It was a companion of mine during the last year of college and then the first year of university. At that point I began to realise its frailties and eventually, it died during my second year of university. The panic and anxiety year. In some ways the anxiety issues are largely behind me and I had a lot of humble pie to learn from those times. I was a very frightened person, my motivation was out of fear of failure, not the yearning of success and happiness. Back then I had no perceived chance of happiness.

Back then the one most comforting thing I would do was lay in bed and play bbc news, or some other streaming programme that BBC had on. Back then they didn't have iPlayer. I think that I would have used it well. I've borrowed that tendency to today, when I listen to podcasts or streaming comedy in my sleep. But back in those anxiety days, I listened to the news and focused on it, I lost myself in current affairs and sometimes I'd allow myself to sleep, making the excuse that I was listening to TV. To this day, the outro theme to newsnight fills me with fear and dread; reminding me of the time back then when I realised that the tv programme was over and I had to return back to life. The life that I hated for all so many reasons.

2. The second laptop represents a lot of things. In a sense I have gone through a great amount of transitions and versions of myself. The second laptop I got from the disability student allowance. It was great, even by today's standard's it is tough bodied, light and exceptionally small. You can tell it was a well crafted instrument. I survived the anxiety days, and then I lived through third year. I think I'll gloss over that memory in this post. There was graduation limbo where I didn't get much done during the summer of 2007. At the end of that summer I had an eventful discussion with two friends of mine. I think I called them Jon and John in a previous post. They were so happy with their lives after graduating; they had the girlfriend, the job, the money, the body, and the good looks. Everything I didn't have.

I resolved on that day, the 30th august 2007, to start changing myself. My changes worked. I have covered that part of my life in the various posts on this blog. I then got an Asus computer, and this third laptop that I am currently using.

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