The last couple of days have been stressful.
I will try to catch you up.
Last Saturday, my new monitor (this thing) arrived. Boffo! This kicked off my efforts to clean my desk before putting my nice new monitor on it.
This took three days (Sunday, Monday, and most of Tuesday) due to my physical limitations, specifically my lack of endurance.
The fact that the job kicked up a lot of particulates that triggered my “hay fever” (or whatever it is) did not help either.
But I got it done, and I am extremely proud of that. When I unboxed the monitor at last, it was placed on a spotlessly clean desk.
And that felt really good. For once, I felt like I really accomplished something. And that felt really, really good.
I must press that memory as deeply into the layers of my mind as possible so I can use it to fight the bad voices in my head that tell me doing things is pointless, it won’t work and you’ll hate every minute of it, you’ll wish you hadn’t bothered, and so forth.
Bullshit, all of it. I actually quite enjoyed my little cleaning project. Working on something tangible while listening to podcasts turned out to be a highly copacetic use of my time.
So when I sat down to set up the monitor at long last, I was feeling fine. So far, everything had unfolded in a delightfully smooth and orderly way and I was minutes away from using my new toy.
But then I hit a snag.
The HDMI cable Spuug bought me got bent at one end somehow.
Bent as in now at a right angle to the cable it connects.
I have no clue how that happened. My only theory is that it happened when I gently laid the monitor on its back with the HDMI cable plugged into it, and the weight of the monitor bent it out of true.
If so, the damned thing was very flimsy. It’s not like the entire weight of the monitor was on it. The monitor was sitting on my comforter and therefore most of its weight was being supported by its cushiony softness.
I tried for a while to get the thing to work, bend and all. But that did not and eventually the bent end just plain fell apart. Little bristly wires everywhere. And just when I was thinking I might be able to stuff the wires back into the connect and make it work, a big flake fell off the wires.
So much for that.
No HDMI cable means no computer because that’s what my new GPU outputs. So I was now stuck without a computer.
Luckily, I was able to order a new cable off of Amazon. Thank goodness I had just barely enough money to cover it.
So I spent most of today waiting for the damned thing and languishing about with only my tablet to entertain me.
I hate the uncertain sort of waiting. All I had to go on from Amazon is that it would be here “before 10 pm”.
Oh gee thanks, Amazon, for eliminating two entire hours of arrival time.
Oh well, the cable is here now and currently plugged into my old monitor.
Because the new one has one final hurdle, and that’s putting together the stand that supports it. Not optional because the monitor has no way of staying upright otherwise.
There are, of course, instructions on how to put the damned thing together.
But the instructions are just pictures, and I don’t speak pictures.
Damn those cheap bastards for not wanting to translate the instructions into a whole bunch of languages.
So I am going to ask Joe to help. He’s more mechanically inclined than I am (low bar) and between us we might just be able to figure this shit out.
The thing is, I know that I am mentally capable of understanding the instructions. They have a simple logic to them and I am fantastic at logic. I know I can do it.
But I have a psychological block concerning picture learning. I have far too many bad memories of trying to figure out picture instructions and becoming hopelessly lost and very emotionally upset.
That’s why I need Joe. Not only does he have a better chance of understanding the frigging instructions, he can anchor me when I am becoming overwrought.
Because I am not the calm and logical person I thought was.
I am quite sensitive and emotional. in fact. \
And I am fine with that.
More after the break.
Paging Doctor Costin
I had therapy today (Wednesday) instead of tomorrow (Thursday) because tomorrow my therapist Doctor Costin goes under the knife to get a cancerous lesion removed from his skin.
And I am worried for him. He’s in his 70s, and cancer is scary.
At least it’s skin cancer, which is the most treatable form of cancer with the best prognoses and a low rate of metastasis.
So sayeth the robot portion of my brain. Thanks. robot!
Nevertheless, I fret. Over the decade plus that he has been my therapist, I have grown quite attached to him, and would hate to see him come to harm.
On the brutally pragmatic side, the odds of my getting another therapist here in Richmond are slim to none.
But that doesn’t matter. I just want him to be safe and well.
I would pray for him if I believed in that sort of thing.
And once more it strikes me what a strange creature I am. Part of me is warm, caring, sensitive, compassionate, and loving.
And part of me is a machine of such brutal efficiency that it quite frankly scares the hell out of me.
Mother and the Machine, I call it. So far, I have not been able to dream up a version of myself that includes both parts.
The closest I have come is to think of the robot nanny from the Ray Bradbury shorts story I Sing The Body Electric.
She is both robotic and warmly maternal. In fact, the fact that she’s a robot makes her extremely good at being a nanny because she has no personal motives, no physical desires, no psychological issues, and no desire for gain.
She can devote one hundred percent of her considerable energies to being the best caretaker for the kids she possibly can.
She’s practically an angel. Morally perfect because she was programmed that way.
Bradbury wrote the story because he was tired of stories about robots that are cold, calculating, and inhuman. Why would we make them that way?
So he conjured up the exact opposite of that : a robot that’s maternal.
Now that’s a standard I could never meet, but it at least points to a possible starting point for my journey towards a unified identity.
I’ll make it all fit together somehow, gosh darn it!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.