I’m not one for giving names to inanimate objects but I love my laptop that much that I’m considering a virtual baptism.
My laptop has the beginnings of wear on the keyboard from the hours I spend tip-tapping on it, a lot of wear on the edge where my wrists rest, a burned and melted spot where a sparkler from a joint dropped on it and a smear of nail varnish where I was using it as a firm surface to rest my hand. It has to stay plugged into the mains when in use because the battery is so crap but she’s mine... all mine. I even have a special password on it so that no-one else can use it without my permission.
I had a bit of a scare one evening. The kids were in bed, I had my glass of wine on my little side table and my beloved laptop on my knee. I was casually reading a gossip website when flashing colours shot across the screen. Green, blue, yellow... it was like the loading screen for a ZX Spectrum game. I stayed very still and waited. I daren’t move an inch. The flashing stopped. I rubbed my eyes hoping that it was tiredness that was making me see things.
I’m no Carrie Bradshaw. I have shit shoes and all my computer documents are backed up, my music is stored on my mp3 player and I have all my University assignments on my flash drive. So why was I panicking so much? It was because I would feel completely cut off from the rest of my (virtual) world if I didn’t have my lovely little laptop to keep me company of an evening. I would have to spend time with the children *shock horror*. I would have to hold a conversation with my husband (maybe, maybe not!). I would have to find something to occupy myself with to steer me away from insanity.
My whole world is online. The majority of my friends reside at the end of my wireless network, I access the world news via the BBC website and from a variety of online versions of newspapers, I listen to the radio by clicking “listen now” links, I ask for advice from parenting websites and I swap random mundane events in my life via a variety of social networking websites (see previous blog post for proof of this).
Is this the modern world as we know it? How should I change it? Do I want to change it? The majority of television is crap and what I do watch I "discuss" online. I feel more sociable now than I did five years ago when I was younger and lived in a town where I knew considerably more people than I do where I live now. Maybe I like the impersonality of it all? Maybe my online persona is a lot more fun to be with that the real me!!