Thursday, July 07, 2011

Computer Woes

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. ~Jacques Prévert
***
As one blessing comes in, one must go. It seems the computer is doing it’s crazy little game playing that I’ve come to expect upon start up every morning. I wake at 5:30 in the quiet peaceful stillness of the morning, the ultimate time to get some writing done, but by 7 a.m. I am still sitting here trying to get this thing to work.

After it finally decides, “I’m warmed up”, it works for everyone else and the muse has slid into the back of my mind, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to write, and so yet another wasted morning of writing has slipped through my fingers.

I remember about nine years ago, when the computer first came into my life. I hadn’t owned one or ever dreamed of having one. I had never used a microwave, my clothes were hung on a clothesline and life was simplified, and I never sought out more. The writing I did was with a pen and paper, and the only markets I sought were poetry contests in the local paper.

At that time, I had not seen the inside of a library for decades, my son was the center of my world and life went on. Although I craved for more, I had no idea that there was a world out here wanting me to embrace the colors and all the beauty. I assumed life was what you make it, and my life was made to be a domestic goddess, a household engineer if you will, or simplified, a housewife.

My husband at the time didn’t ‘let’ me work outside the home and with every job I did obtain (working for family who had business’) my husband became more and more paranoid, untrusting, and downright obsessive. I wanted to run to the hills but I had no license to drive, so where were my two feet going to take me? Not far I can tell you that.

To make a long story short (yes, I’m writing my memoirs) my life changed the day my brother-in-law gave me a computer, FREE! It was then that my writing took off. I searched google like it was an infinite library of sources, I wrote and wrote and spent way too many hours on this thing! So much so, the obsessive hubby tossed me and my son out!

I didn’t turn to my controlling family, I turned AWAY from Baltimore and headed to Texas! Guess what, there was a world out here waiting for me to embrace the beauty and all the magnificent colors of God’s palette. And embrace and move on I did.

Eight years later I sit enthralled in the writing world. I’m allowed to do my work, write, and no one is obsessive about my use of the computer. The ex has not seen his son for eight years, nor paid one red cent child support, which goes to show, I did the right thing in getting out and saving my son. But God also showed me, I was saving my soul.

Now if only I could get this thing to work! *BANG* *knock* *KICK* *pull* *TUG*
Just trying to ‘reboot’!

***

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. 
~Dwight D. Eisenhower


2 comments:

OtienoHongo said...

Wow, this is really something! Glad something good came out of a bad situation. Now you need to get yourself a new computer!

joni said...

Thanks Otieno!
All good things come to those who wait. :)

I figure if I'm patient, I might get a new one in ten years. lol :)