Wed, 28 May 2025 01:05:33 UTC
have you ever had something happen that made you realize that something fundamental about yourself has changed? i used to always have a computer set up in some shape or form. it was always the first thing i would do after moving. it was something i missed when i travelled. if i couldnt have a proper setup for whatever reason, i would make do. when i first moved to Colorado i didnt have a monitor stand so i bolted my monitor to a cardboard box and weighed it down with scrap tv power supply boards. the monitor was so far forward that there was barely enough room to have the keyboard on the desk. it was incredibly uncomfortable to use but i didnt mind, it was better than nothing. right now i dont have a setup and thats... completely okay?
we moved the desk out of my room the other day and i have a desk in my car to replace it. havent gotten around to bringing it inside. given my past history i would expect to be itching to have my setup put back together. i would have expected to come to some awful compromise with everything set up on the floor or something. maybe have the computer plugged into the tv. but i dont have any urge to do that? i just... dont care? its not like ive been pulling my laptop out instead, i just did that for the first time today. all i used it for was hitting a toggle in a settings page that i didnt want to deal with on my phone. but ive also not been using my phone for things, not any more than usual anyway. i just seem to be notably less attached to computers than before.
want to listen to music? use the ipod. want to play a game? theres plenty on the 3ds. want to watch something? just throw a dvd in the xbox or whatever (i dont have a rempote for my blu ray player yet). writing this blog post? thats happening on a laptop that i would rather be an alphasmart neo. there are definitely some tasks that are best served by the desktop computer such as complex 3d modeling but thats not something i constantly need to be doing. and if i did need to be doing that? i have a desktop set up at the local not makerspace. yeah its like 20 minutes away but thats fine. i booted it up once in the last week to slice a benchy for a printer i was working on. i could just as easily have used one of the laptops that sit there.
so what changed? how did i go from "needs a computer to be comfortable" to "its just another tool"? i mean like, yeah i kinda despise the industry these days but surely that cant be the whole reason? its not like the alternative ways of doing computer tasks are things that only recently became available to me. ive had the ipod, 3ds, xbox, etc for many years now. i also find myself using my phone less now that i think about it? i can pinpoint the cause for that though, the phone dependence posts talk about it. not caring about having a computer setup or not feels... both completely normal and odd at the same time? the feeling itself feels normal but the feeling about the feeling is odd. if that makes any sense. i guess the lesson of the day is that sometimes core things about ourselves change and thats okay.