Technological Rage: Revenge is Mine

Don't try to deny it; sometimes, technology is actively malevolent. I know, I know, that the printer understands my request. And what's more, the printer knows that I know. The printer, in fact, is enjoying sincere, perverse pleasure in my knowing that it knows that I know that it BLOODY WELL UNDERSTANDS MY REQUEST. Its persistence in refusing to honour my request serves, extremely effectively, to send me into the throws of a technological rage. Meanwhile, the printer kicks back and enjoys the show. Two hours later, after I have given up and am sitting forlornly amidst the ruins of my pride and patience, the printer has one final laugh by unexpectedly, and very noisily, turning itself off. I live alone, so loud, unanticipated noises tend to freak me out in quite a big way. Then I get angry all over again. Don't tell me the printer didn't foresee that exact result. It was planning it. Waiting for the exact moment when I was about to relax. See? Malevolent.

Once, in a technological rage, I threw a printer cartridge at the wall. This was a mistake. A big, messy, splattery mistake. Since then, I have effectively been afraid of exacting physical revenge on technology, no matter how much it angers me. I have been conditioned to fear technology, and to bow hopelessly to its will. If the GPS tells me to turn right, I turn right, even if I know for sure that my destination is left. Basically, I am technology's bitch.

Or, at least, I was.

Not so long ago, I purchased a running watch. I wanted this watch to perform a few, relatively simple, tasks. I wanted it to tell me for how long I had been running, in terms of time. I wanted it to inform me of the distance I had covered, in either kilometres or miles - you choose, watch, I'm not fussy. It would also have been nice to know how fast or (more likely) slowly I had performed individual laps. That was about it. I don't think it was asking all that much, especially not for an investment of a cool hundred pounds. Would the watch perform? It would not. Time after time I put the watch on, headed out for a run, and came back utterly clueless as to any of the above pieces of data. I won't bore you with the whys and wherefores, it just so happens that I chose a particularly perverse, unuserfriendly  piece of technology. It UNDERSTOOD what I wanted, it just didn't want to give it to me.

After a particularly stressful workday, I came home intent on having another attempt at going for a run. This time, watch, I said, without much conviction, it must be noted, you are going to work. We are going to go for a run, and you are going to tell me what I wish to know about this run. Afterwards, we will both be happy. See how it works? I run, you work, everyone happy. Bon?

Pas bon. I started fiddling with the watch, endeavouring to reach the basic set up page and, well, set it up. No good. I then decided to try pitting technology against itself, and searched YouTube, using some variation of the words: 'how the effing hell does my effing watch work?' I found a video, I watched a video, I was none the wiser. So I decided to try an old tactic, namely, pleading with the watch. Please watch, I whimpered. Please, I really just need you to work. I really want to go for a run. Only a little run. Please watch. Pleeeeeeeeease.

No good. I started crying. I didn't think that this was going to make the watch work, but I was at the end of my tether. I was tired, infuriated, frustrated, with myself, the watch and the world. I was lonely. I was fed up with trying to make things work on my own, with having no help. My rage and self-pity were reaching tipping point. I'd spent £100 on this stupid bloody thing that wouldn't do what it was supposed to. I'd chosen badly, AGAIN. Another crappy life decision, bought to you by me. Another piece of technology picking on me, taking me for a fool. I was so furious I think I remember actually BITING the watch. The run was a write off and I cried myself out, utterly defeated.

Then, suddenly, magically, I was overtaken by a profound sense of calm and determination. My rage was gone, replaced with a cold, calculating understanding of what I had to do. It was time for technology to learn a lesson. Sod the £100. I went to the tool cupboard and collected the hammer.

I was slightly disappointed by how little of a fight the watch put up. Within a very few seconds it had been comprehensively smashed to smithereens. I was still finding pieces of it in the garden weeks later. Now, I'm not generally an advocate of violence, but in this instance it was exactly the right call. By taking decisive action I saved myself from future frustration at the hands of that particular piece of technology. Interestingly, the printer has since behaved itself immaculately.

Oh, and someone I love very much bought me a new running watch. So maybe I'm not quite as alone as I thought.

The Bonkers Tree

I've been going around in circles with this blog post for a few days now. I've been worrying that readers are going to misunderstand, and think I'm being flippant about a subject that is not only serious, but that I take very seriously. 

So I guess I just want to say that yes, maybe I do seem flippant, but what I actually believe is that sometimes it's OK to poke fun at even the most awful, painful things. That, sometimes, poking fun might be the exact right thing to do. Here goes:

I'm not ashamed to say that 90% of the people I love the most in this world are at least a little bit bonkers. Bonkers people make my world funnier, richer, stranger, quirkier and all round better. I like to think I'm a good bit bonkers myself. But the trouble with bonkers people is that, well, they're bonkers. Bonkers people do all sorts of bonkers things, not all of them good. Over the years, I have loved - and still love - people who occasionally hang out under the following branches of the bonkers tree: depression (in several forms), drug addiction, alcoholism, obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia and bulimia.

This post was inspired by a beautiful, bonkers, bulimic. For the first few years of our friendship, she was in recovery, and I didn't even really know that she was ill. There wasn't anything wrong with her, as far as I could see. She's drop dead gorgeous, inside and out. Now she's relapsed, in a pretty spectacular manner, but I only know that she's ill, that she's suffering the most horrendous distress, because she trusts me enough to tell me about it. From the outside, she still looks drop dead gorgeous. It is only very recently that I have started to really comprehend the bleak and stormy landscape in which she is living. She wrote this eloquent, elegant paragraph to me in an email last week:

I think in the last five years I've been able to grow a comfortable layer of denial over it, and because I was never hospitalised, and always appeared functional, in some ways it's easy to talk yourself out of being entitled to have any feelings of loss. It's not like I'm in a cast and can say 'look, it's broken!' and get people to write all over it. That would be cool. What would you write on my bulimia? 

What would you write on my bulimia? It is a beautiful, strange idea. What would you write, if faced with inescapable physical evidence of an illness that generally hides out deep in the mind? For me, it comes down to a realisation I have had over the past year or so, that the last thing you want to hear when you are suffering is a platitude. I may think that my friend is extraordinarily beautiful, and most definitely NOT FAT, but what the heck does she care about that? The point is not whether I think she's gorgeous or not, it's what she feels about herself. I'd rather look her straight in the eye and say, "yep, wow, that's TOTALLY BROKEN. Ouch. Here, let me write on that."

So, without further ado, behold my (very poor) visual representations of the things I'd like to say to the psychological bonkerosity of some of the people I love:

Bulimia

Drug addiction

Depression

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Looking at this now I see that it's really only the tiniest seed of an idea. Yet it's kind of an interesting idea, and an important one. Human beings can be broken in all sorts of different ways. It takes a lot of courage to admit to the outside world that something is broken inside you. People, lots of people, won't know what to say, what to think, what to do. I'm probably not saying or doing the right things for my friends, half the time. So I guess the point is, I SEE YOU. I can see that you've got a broken thing. I'm guessing it hurts. I'm sorry. Can I cover it in coloured pen?