I love technology… when it helps me. I do not love tech for tech’s sake. So when things go wrong, I get really stressed out. I have a new computer, the old was running slower and slower and was awfully heavy to tote. But switching to the new required hours and hours under Best Buy’s fluorescent lights hostage to the people I’d paid to make the transfer of data. It was agonizing and turned out to be impossible for them to handle precisely the things that I knew I’d have trouble managing. So it was a bust of a lot of time. I like my new computer (faster, lighter), but it turns out that there’s some internal glitch with its wi-fi features. Occasionally I simply cannot get online. The time one spends trouble-shooting these things can end up being a lot more of a work day than work itself; and that makes me a little batty. But what’s to do? One’s hands are tied…
There’s a surreal nature to it all. The things that are supposed to make life’s work easier and smoother (and DO, more often than not!) can suddenly pose the most exasperating problems, hijacking the very work they’re supposed to aid. It all feels particularly bizarre to me these days, as I’ve returned to a brief writing project — Christmas meditations from a problematic Christian — that draws from the deepest, most tender and shy parts of me, call it soul or heart or whatever. Going back and forth between tech stress and the mystical reality of an incarnate God is a teeter totter experience, complete with the catching-air bump that you got when your friend landed her side really hard against the ground. Finally, I guess this is just what it is — earthy life with its unpredictable challenges and distresses as the natural context for that which transports, elates, delights, and inspires. They’re all mixed up together. Now, if I could just get a handle on the tech stress.
