In switching jobs, I had to turn in "my" laptop to my previous place of employment, since it belonged to them. It was a sad and difficult moment. Luckily, Henry has an almost identical laptop, and being both a thoughtful husband and a skilful system administrator, he set me up as a user there, and transferred every last little thing to it, so that I could sit on the sofa and do all the computing I usually do without ever noticing a change. And yet, it was not the same. I could not make the leap and feel at home on that laptop.
It was the phenomenon of the irreplaceable shoes. You have a pair of shoes that you love; they are cute, they are comfortable, they go with everything. You polish them, you carefully keep them salt-free in the winter. The heel (which is just the right height) wears down; you have it repaired. The sole starts to get thin; you have it replaced at some expense with a fancy rubbery sole. Eventually you have to admit to yourself that these perfect shoes have lived a long and useful life, and it may be time to set them lovingly and tearfully adrift on an ice floe to meet their fate. But fate is kind, and to your delight, soon after, you find an identical pair, recently discontinued, at TJ Maxx! Your heart full, you hold them close, pay for them, and run home. The next day, you get dressed and finish with the shoes. But somehow, you aren't quite ready to wear them out, so you put them back in the closet. Day after day, the same scenario unfolds. Finally you realized that although these shoes seem to be identical, they lack that certain something that made your old shoes so very, um, sole-matey. You will never bond with them in quite that way, and sooner or later they will go to Kiwanis and be a wonderful bargain for someone else. The only way to move forward is to find an all-new pair of irreplaceable shoes that have their own delights and their own way of perfection.
So you can imagine my joy when, at the end of last week, my new work laptop was delivered. I had a desktop machine, but it was indeed a machine, and not personal. Now that I have this lovely, lovely new MacBook, I feel like I can think again. I have decided that the computer is how my brain connects to the outside world, and my notebooks (paper ones) are how my brain connects back to myself. That explains why I've been stuck in a loop for all these weeks, and now, here I am, outside in the fresh air.
Okay, I admit that's a few blocks past eccentric and into the neighborhood of the downright weird.
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