We're Back Online,

 Yesterday was the start of something that felt good for the first time in a while and that was sitting somewhere - although I was sitting in my bed and that's not the best thing, from experience - and writing something, even if it wasn't working on the novels that I want to write, and will hopefully one day finish. 

I wish that I could say that it was as simple as now the laptop has arrived I have sat all day and powered through a few thousand words to battle the monster of 4TheWords and have been able to write something more of one of the things which has been buzzing around my head, but alas, my birthday and Mothering Sunday appear to have coincided this year, so I felt the need to see my mother and my dad's mother, since next weekend I will be away from home and occupied. I wish I was doing something like I did for my twenty first birthday - flying away to Budapest for a city break - or my twenty fifth birthday - getting the train to Paris and having my first birthday ever in the snow, spending a rainy day eating madeleines, drinking fresh orange juice and reading the rest of Ready Player One - but this one is going to be a little different, partly because I will still be in the UK, but for other reasons as well. 

What has happened is I have found the excitement to come home and write again, and the ability to just open the laptop and get straight on with it is something which really helps with that. I'm able to just get straight on with whatever, and even though that does help me to get distracted, too - research, who is that person I'm thinking of, what am I naming this character, no I don't like that, why is my brain so itchy right now - it helps me spend my limited ability to focus on the right things, like writing this blog and getting back onto 4TheWords to write something, anything and just about everything. Somehow it seems to have helped my brain feel a little bit less loud and that will always be welcome. 

Anyway, I'm going to get back to it.

It Takes Me a While to Be Impulsive,

It's been about four months since four keys died on my Pixelbook and I have been honestly struggling to cope with my other laptop so much that I tend to avoid doing anything on the laptop and only use it as a last resort for when my phone really won't cut the mustard or I don't want to use my work laptop in my off time for researching things, and honestly, I came to the conclusion that I was upsetting myself and affecting my mental health for no good reason. It might sound stupid, but when one of the things that you identify yourself as is a writer - you know the whole writer, dreamer, fairies believer, I'm a general cloud head and a Scout leader... - it's really hard to admit that actually, I can't be one of those things at the moment because it feels like there is something physically blocking me from being it. My crap laptop (otherwise known as the Craptop because it's me and everything has to have a name, even if it's stupid) is the one that swallowed an entire novel a couple of years ago (when I say a couple of years ago, I'm doing that old person thing of I don't mean two years ago, I mean about five years ago) and I've never truly forgiven it, and I've never really gotten over it. 

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my more techy friends who told me, in far more polite terms that were a bit beyond my technical knowledge, the Pixelbook is fxxxed and whilst I knew that changing laptops was one of the last things I wanted to do because I hate change, I also knew that trying to struggle along on the Craptop wasn't doing any good and that as much as I could use Pixie with an external keyboard or something, it's not the same and the reason I bought it in the first place was because I needed a portal computer, and a Chromebook worked well because it was zippy and light and everything I wanted it to be when I was away from my tower PC. The problem over the last six months has also been that my office (at home, but home office means something different to me) just doesn't work for me to be using the PC. 

All of that is the reasoning that added up to me doing something somewhat crazy and impulsive and that was, I bought myself a new laptop. And it's a Mac. 

Yes, I realise saying that I don't like change and then switching operating systems like that is stupid and I have been utterly baffled and confused since finishing the set up because everything feels weird and new and different, but holy heckery, it's beautiful and it's fast and it's light and I love it. Yes, there is a learning curve to using it, and there is one thing about it which I don't love like I loved Pixie for, but it is the single most ridiculous complaint I could come up with and that is that the power plug only goes into one side and when I'm plugging it in to charge in my room, ideally I would have preferred the power cable on the other side, but it's also on the side which I think is the most common for power cables to be on. 

It's already making a difference, too, because sitting here and writing this has felt the most comfortable I have felt in months (when it comes to writing) so even though I will probably take a lot more time to get over the fact I can't just Control + A to select everything, and the fact that the buttons to close the window are on the wrong side, and the fact that this laptop isn't touch screen (that actually makes me happy because I hate touching the touch screen and forever having fingerprints up my screen) I am really thrilled that my new laptop is here, and it's working and it's relieved a level of stress that I didn't even realise that I was feeling. 

Hopefully this is the change I have been needing!