[Writer Post] Technology – My Best Nemesis
I’ve made no attempt to hide the fact I love Phineas and Ferb – thanks to the influence of several friends and fellow writers. One of the things I love about it is the Best Nemesis relationship between Agent P/Perry the Platypus and Dr. Doofenshmirtz – they’re both best friends and worst enemies. I feel I have that relationship with technology.
Technology is a necessary evil for all of us — especially writers. It can be a huge help. Word processors make fixing mistakes SO MUCH EASIER than it used to be with typewriters. It can also be a huge hassle and time sink. There’s always, ALWAYS something to do on the computer that isn’t writing. Let’s set aside the business aspects of keeping up with social media to have our “online presence/platform”. I’m not even I’m simply talking about the general upkeep of our devices and applications.
I spent a major portion of yesterday updating my iPhone 3GS. I admit to being only marginally technologically savvy, but this was a particular bear of an update. It may actually be “fixed” now, but who knows. I ended up not having access to most of my phone for most of a day yesterday. It wasn’t just not having phone withdrawals; there were other complications to having issues with the updating.
The glitches in the programs slowed down the computer massively. I had to restart it – and it came down to a hard restart of my phone – several times to get programs moving freely. I had to take the time to resort and reinstall most of the apps and music on my phone – multiple times. And that’s just the phone this once. In the past I’ve been stuck in update loops for my computer. There have been learning curves with social media changes. Then we dealt with a couple of days with wireless connection issues.
These are hours upon hours of time spent NOT WRITING because of the attention and aggravation of the technology. All in the name of making life “easier”. To do more in less time and to make writing/creative endeavors “easier”. Right… for the most part technology does just that. And in those times when I want to throw the machinery out of the window? Well that’s when I love my pen collection.
Theoretically, I should have/could have been using pen and paper to work – and for some of the updating hell I was in yesterday – I did some catch up typing. However, there’s an emotional and energy drain when dealing with error messages and frozen applications that intimately affects creative output. I tried to work yesterday, I really did. And I did get some stuff accomplished, but what I did wasn’t in any way my best work simply because my mind was elsewhere — beating against technology.
I will continue to use my tech. When it works, it’s worth every minute of the headache. But I never look forward to making my tech “better”, because it almost always turns into a headache.