Hey, what do I do?
A quick fast forward to the present…well, yesterday actually – before I go back to the chronological outpouring. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I realised what withdrawal symptoms were. At 11 in the morning, things were going soooo well, when suddenly, wham! Google did the ditch on me. Suddenly, nothing…no hint of Google or the many Google aids I’d come to depend on. And I had no idea what to do! I waited, I tried, retried…but nothing!
It was one long day, I can tell you. I twiddled my thumbs, drove everyone in the house crazy (how on earth do we know why??, maybe it will be OK tomorrow! will you just shut up!!!). I went to bed at 10 because I was tired just doing nothing. That’s when it hit me – just how addicted I was. And there was absolutely nothing I could do. I just had to get my daily fix – my G-fix – for things to be ‘all’s right with my world’!
I woke up this morning and switched on the computer, rather guiltily, even before I brushed my teeth. My world went back to normal when I saw I was connected again. Wow!
The dance of romance
I doubt if there really is any other comparison I can make. It was like first love. Just a few steps forward, then retreat. Then a few more steps…and so it went on. Each time it felt new, different, wonderful. And then one fine day, you find you’ve tumbled in headlong, head over heels. And you just have to sink or swim. And swim I did…rather awkwardly at first…then with growing confidence. It took me ages to venture out into the big wide Google sea….but even the paddling and then the swimming in the shallows was a heady experience. I guess somewhere deep down I knew I was hooked for life. I knew I had found my destiny. There was no going back. And my life was clearly divided – pre-Google and post-Google.
It don’t come easy!
Well, it didn’t….not for me. I’d come to a stage in my life when things were pretty much black and white. There were things I could do and things I could not. This was very much in the area of ‘could not’. It took me a while to realise that it was more a case of ‘would not’! Like it took me a while to take more than a few steps into this wonderful new world and then hurry back into the safety of the known and familiar.
Then it started. Slowly, a growing confidence. The first few steps, then a few more. Ahhhh…this was good. It was a voyage of discovery. With each new day, I felt I could cope a little bit better. And then it hit me! There was so much in this great big world before me, one lifetime just wasn’t enough…I’d probably need many more. Would that I were a cat…but maybe even nine lives wouldn’t be enough. And the fact that it wasn’t a static world but one that was growing every day, much like our universe, filled me with awe.
But for now, enough that I was in. That I was one of the privileged ones. That I could just switch on my computer and fly away into the wild blue yonder of the www on the great Google getaway magic carpet!
First Steps
Time was when the Internet was something other people visited. Not my scene…too late for an old dog like me to learn new tricks. But snail mail gave way to email and one had to get in there or be left out. So, unwillingly, I was dragged in. And I just read my mail, posted replies and exited fast. Computers, technology and me? Hey I liked reading and books and writing…the old-fashioned way. Two-finger typing was strictly to reply to those emails- that’s all.
It’s fun, they told me. Excuse me? I said. My 13-year old daughter laughed. You’ll soon get the hang of it they promised. Who wants to? I wondered.
Then it happened. Revelation. Enlightenment. Discovery. I discovered the window to worlds undreamed of. And they called it a search engine. A rather mundane name for a magical door. Google. Suddenly, before I knew it, I was hooked. And there was no going back. Shades of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland. I’d found the magic potion and I just had to drink of it every day. And I opened that Google gate to a voyage of discovery.