Brainwork
My ability to survive and thrive in my day-to-day life depends on two brains. One is the approximately three pounds of lumpy grey and white matter between my ears. The other, about 2.5 pounds heavier and also grey and white, is my laptop. They aren’t a truly redundant system — I haven’t yet figured out how to sync them, and let’s not even get into the mutual failover issue. But I’m equally dependent on each, for different reasons, and I fiddle with either one only with great caution.
Technically, it’s easier to muck around with the computer. If I don’t like the results, I delete the file or application and try again. If I mess up, I restore from my latest backup. If I really mess up, I always have the option of wiping the hard drive and reinstalling everything from scratch, or if necessary trotting the whole shebang over to the Genius Bar at the Apple store. And if all else fails, I can move the contents onto a new machine.
With the so-called wetware, it’s not quite so simple. I can upgrade some of the software, so to speak, but there’s no such thing as migrating to a new cerebral cortex, so it’s taken me a while to get everything running smoothly. If you’ll pardon the nerdy analogy, I’m still resolving various conflicts and incompatibilities — but by and large, things are finally operating as they should, and given how much time and effort (not to mention cash) I’ve expended to get there, I’m reluctant to experiment.
I rely so much on my two brains that tinkering with either one of them makes me anxious. This week I’ve been tweaking both at once, which I consider brave and/or foolhardy, even though I pretty much know what I’m doing.
This afternoon, I’m wrapping up the complex and somewhat nervewracking ritual of setting up a new laptop. Each stage has its own attendant anxieties, from transferring data from the old laptop to the new one (What if I lose something important, like the article I’m writing that’s due next week, and can’t get it back?) to doing a total erase and system reinstall so the old laptop is ready for its new owner (What if I accidentally pass along the Quicken file with almost 20 years of my financial records?).
I’ve done this plenty of times; I know what I’m doing, and besides, the Migration Assistant in OSX makes it damn near idiotproof. And yet I still cringed last night when I put the system disks in the old laptop and told it to restore itself to factory-fresh settings, and again when I set up a seven-pass erase on the old external drive. Even with two other copies of my data, one on the new laptop and one on its new backup drive, I still had to push past that last tiny bit of oh no, what if I make a mistake that can’t be undone?
Meanwhile, I’m also testing a couple of medications meant to reset my circadian clock when it’s been badly thrown off. Two or three times a year, I get turned upside down chronologically somehow, and I want a way to get myself back on local time in a day or two rather than struggling to function for a week as I inch my wake/sleep patterns forward or backwards by an hour or two every night. This is definitely not something I’ll be trying on a regular basis, mind you, but knowing it’s possible is a comfort.
I’m trying both medications now, when my clock is properly set, because I want to be sure they don’t make me twitch, puke, lose touch with reality, or sprout an extra limb, so that if and when I need them, I at least know they won’t make matters worse. I’m doing this with a doctor’s approval, but even so, when I swallowed half a white tablet this morning, I felt a rush of deja vu from last night. That niggling apprehension, that last tiny bit of oh no, what if I make a mistake that can’t be undone?
Filed under fears, progress, Uncategorized | Comments (2)Travel Tuesdays: what not to wear
I just got back from visiting family in the Midwest, and I have two questions about the brilliant sartorial parade that is an airport at peak travel season.
First, rubber flip-flops are just this side of barefoot. Is it really necessary to make people take them off to go through security?
And second, when did rubber flip-flops — not to mention pajama pants, backless sequinned halter tops, and t-shirts with blatantly misogynist slogans — become appropriate travel attire?
It’s possible to be comfortable and still look at least somewhat put together and appropriate for public viewing — and no, you don’t have to buy special clothes from travel catalogs. I certainly like my simple cotton tank dress with the secret passport pocket hidden in the hem and my microfiber pants that can be washed in a hotel sink at night and dry by morning, but those are for major trips, not quick jaunts to see the relatives or hang out with friends. For those trips, I get on the plane wearing what I’ve come to think of as my personal uniform:
- a plain t-shirt (not crewneck!), short-sleeved except in the dead of winter, preferably in a dark color to hide the inevitable in-flight spills
- jeans or pants with a little stretch, not too tight but not loose enough to require a belt, again in a dark color
- a cardigan sweater (lightweight in summer, heavier the rest of the year) that I can wear on the plane if I’m cold and remove if I’m warm, because I’m often both in the space of a single flight
- low-heeled but polished or at least quirky shoes that slip on and off easily at security (i.e. no laces!)
No sweats, no (oh heavens no) sandals with socks, no clothing with an offensive punchline. Just simple, flattering basics chosen because they’re comfortable enough for the carrying, standing, sitting, and waiting that modern air travel has become.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for a return to the days when flying was such a special occasion that it called for dressing in one’s Sunday best; let’s face it, seats were bigger and more comfortable then, and four hours in coach weren’t likely to turn a tailored jacket or well-pressed shirt into a rumpled, sweaty mess. I’m also not willing to traipse through the terminal in heels, especially given my preference for traveling carry-on only. But neither do I believe travel is an excuse to dress like you’re planning to spend the day lying on your couch (or someone else’s). Clothing makes a statement, and I’m not convinced “I’m a slob” or “I hate women” or “I’m not wearing a bra” are good statements to make in transit from point A to point B.
What do you wear when you travel, and why?
A place I used to know
I’m writing this in the middle of the night, in what was once my bedroom. I’m surrounded by the furniture I picked out in 1976. I can still see faint smudges on one wall from the tacky adhesive where I once hung a dozen Shaun Cassidy posters. My prom dress is still in one far corner of the closet. The girl who slept in this room almost every night from age 9 through 16 grew up to be me. But she doesn’t exist any more.
Once upon a time, no matter how old I was when I walked in the door, I reverted in two hours or less to the driven teen, the withdrawn adolescent, or the shy and awkward child I used to be. I reacted to criticism by arguing or sulking; I felt I had to prove myself all over again. I found myself asking for permission to do things I do in my adult life without thinking — as though by returning to this house, I was also returning to being a child without the right to make independent decisions. It wasn’t a conscious choice. I just slipped seamlessly, as many people do, into the assumption that if I was in this house, I was by definition under parental authority again, whether I liked it or not.
And I didn’t like it.
The girl who grew up in this room believed that her job was to be the person her parents wanted and expected her to be. That if she disagreed with them, she had to argue or persuade them into agreeing with her, and if she failed at that, that it was her duty to concede. That because they were her parents, she was always required, around them, to be the child. But as I said, that girl doesn’t exist any more.
It’s one thing to be 9 or 12 or 15 and unready to accept the responsibility and power of adult life. It’s another thing entirely to be 22 or 35 or 40 and feel like that responsibility and power is being snatched away, or worse, to feel like you’re obligated to hand it over. The catch, though, is that if you’re 22 or 35 or 40 and you find yourself reverting to childhood around your parents, that’s no longer your parents’ fault. No matter how much they may like it, it’s not your job to go along with it. At a certain point, “growing up” means being willing and able to say, “Topic X is not up for discussion” or “I’m sorry, I won’t be doing Y” or “I realize you’re not comfortable with it, but I’m going to do Z anyway.”
For some of us, that comes naturally. For others, not so much. But it has to come. Otherwise, no matter how much of an adult you seem to be on the outside, a part of you is still sleeping on a twin bed underneath a dozen posters of a long-deposed teen idol.
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