I have a confession to make... I wasn't always Editor-in-Kill -- I mean, Chief -- of ESP (or anywhere else, for that matter). Not too long ago, I was just a writer-for-hire. I spent hours every day, scanning through sites like Craigslist, Elance, and Freelancer.com to find nuggets of work to pay the bills. In winter, I huddled next to a space heater because turning the gas on in my uninsulated apartment would bleed me dry. In summer, I stripped down to my underwear and kept a towel next to me to mop up the sweat before it poured all over my laptop. Whenever I wasn't writing, I was running off to one food service job or another, pulling dogsitting and babysitting jobs whenever I could to make it to the next month without eviction...
In my head, my life was like...
Nice robe, lady. What's in the cup?
In reality, it was a lot more like...
Just kidding. That's from Halloween a couple years ago.
I make a pretty great Courtney Love, though, right?
I make a pretty great Courtney Love, though, right?
Anyway, so I was struggling, working, moving, scraping -- all the things you have to do to make it as a writer. And one of the pieces of fallout from all of this was my phone. I could barely afford luxuries like an $8/month Netflix account or a night out for $1 beers at my favorite dive. A smart phone was lightyears from my budget. As a result, I spent a lot of time doing this...
"Hey, lady. 2004 called. They want their phone back."
And that disreputable little LG (dlLG) was the upgrade! I might've been the last woman on Earth with a Razr before the little pink flip-brick finally crapped out (try T9 texting with a broken 2 button sometime. So. Much. Fun!).
A beautiful and brilliant friend of mine tried to give me a nudge in the right direction. Handing her old iPhone over to me, she cited technology as a major player in my progress as a writer. After all, I'd recently dumped my ancient HP, buying a heavily-discounted MacBook from a friend, and I was getting more contracts... Correlation shouldn't be confused with causation, but she had a point. I'd been writing a lot more and getting a lot more work since I'd upgraded.
I spent the next year and change carrying around the dlLG and my very fancy iDevice in my purse together. Whenever I was somewhere with wifi, I could pretend I was a real person, with a real phone, who could really have the internet in her pocket at all[sic] times. I made jokes about duct taping them together to make a $14/month* smart-brick (FrankenPhone?).
To get what I wanted (Internet! Now!), I asked a lot of waiters at a lot of bars for the passwords to their networks.
"I'll take the largest margarita you have, your network key, and your heart, please."
But sometimes they didn't know the password. Sometimes there was no wifi to be had. I was used to this, though, having lived for so long with nothing but the dlLG. If I was alone, I'd just pick up a local newspaper or grab a book from my bag. If I was out with friends, I'd jealously look on as they looked up every answer to every trivia question ever asked.
It wasn't always like this. There was a time, not too long ago, that I hadn't cared whether my friends had the World in their pockets. I might ask one of them to look something up for me, but it just wasn't a big deal.
But the Change had begun...
Innocently enough, I began working more and more with my new partners in crime. We slaved over words and ideas, tasks and dreams. We became the Electric Sheep Scribes. We made the commitment to hook up the electrodes, throw the switch, and bring Electric Sheep Press to life.
As part of this process, a Nokia 300-series Windows phone was bestowed upon me (temporarily, until our next iPhone upgrade). Contacts migrated. The iDevice and the dlLG sit collecting dust on my coffee table. They'll soon be relegated to the Footlocker of Decrepit Technology at the back corner of my office. The World is in my pocket. I will never have to flirt for a wifi password again (though I might, just to keep in practice). I will never sit jealously by while my friends cheat at trivia. Local newspaper? Book? I have those (and so much more!), right here, in my phone.
Oh, you didn't find a UFO on your morning run?
I'm sorry. You must still have a dumb phone.
...And then the battery died.
*I did a lot of weaseling to get a phone bill that low. I'm not proud of it, but I ain't exactly ashamed, either.
Technology is always wonderful when you have battery life. Thanks for the scribe.
ReplyDeleteI don't have to flirt for wifi passwords anymore... Just access to power outlets ;)
ReplyDelete