Author: Patrick

I’ve definitely decided I will be fixing as much of my computers as I can, but I’m also going offline in some ways—revisiting my love of pen and paper as a way to keep writing, so I’ll have to find and unpack my notes. It’ll be good to have my little books of crazy (as I call my frantically jotted collection of random thoughts) back.

I’m exploring the alleys around where I live. Yesterday’s surprise find was what I thought was this elegantly placed bathtub catching the intense afternoon shadows pictured above. Enjoy! I know I did.

Seriously. I think stuff like bathtubs sitting sideways in the back alley of a well‐to‐do neighbourhood of the city is great. How did it get like this? And why hasn’t it been stolen for scrap metal yet? But wait—what’s that just out of frame on the bottom right? An electric mixer. Delightful.

There was more in my head for this post, but I traded the time tonight for making a big dinner for myself using leftover food from work and my little yet quite delux hotel fridge in my room—and toaster oven Jamaican patties from the convenience story. They are fantastic at midnight and even better at 2AM.

So instead of more words, here’s a neat picture of me blowing out the light sensor in my phone’s camera for the sake of art.

I’m writing this from my attic room on my phone. My external drive is still down, and now my laptop is giving me trouble—the battery burst and the system hangs when it tires to do anything with the wireless connection. It’s not specifically too good on the tech front with me. I’m really starting to see the appeal of chisled marks on stone. Those are still readable after thousands of years, and I’ve lost more data than I’m starting to think is worth the hassle of having it on a computer. I might ditch the laptop for a notebook. It doesn’t need charging or authorization from Apple to boot.

However—my room is wonderfully air conditioned, so one point for technology working to make my life better and more comfortable there.

I’ve been taking more pictures lately, and I’m almost to the point where I’d like to start posting them online as a daily feed—something I thoroughly enjoyed doing for years before I stopped when I thought, in all honesty, it was a stupid thing to be doing and no one noticed or cared—forgetting it was something I did because I noticed and cared. Boy—it’s a pain to do HTML on a phone keyboard.

There’s no processing or cropping on this post’s photo either since, in case you’re just joining us, I’m using my phone to make this post. It’s actually more like a terrible little computer that can send txts and make calls rather than anything I’d call a smartphone. There: my basic review of the Android platform as a bonus. Sorry, Google—I’m in love with Symbian. It’s the Finnish connection.

There is a certain rawness to working on just my phone. Perhaps it’s the idea of it being just a little sneaky—like I’m in the middle of The Matrix and I’ve dialed in on an ssh connection to hack things apart, and as I look around my room now the furniture fits: I’m in The Matrix. …Fascinating.

But, rawness—this is what I’d like to continue with, a more direct stream of consciousness from me into this project, less thinking about the stupidity of what it is and more realizing how stupid it would be if I didn’t actually do any of it after all this work. It’s been years. I’ve been working on this for years now that I think about it.

No wonder people think I’m insane.

But I know I’m not. Insane that is. Optimistic for sure—hopelessly so. That will never change. But insane—no.

…Wuff.

This and the I’m Tired post are marked as asides—think of them as little detours on the general narrative of the new life project you’ve all signed up to join me on.

mid 18th century (as a noun): from French détour ‘change of direction,’ from détourner ‘turn away.’

This week’s change in direction comes via a hardware failure in my networked hard drive. All of my files are offline. All my words and photos and music… are all sitting right in front of me, but the little black box I use to get at them refuses to start. I’ll be able to recover everything, but it’s going to take more time, and, odd for time traveller, I sometimes feel like I don’t have as much time as I used to. Am I doing it wrong?

No—everything you’re doing is part of the plan. This is the part where everything breaks and you fix it, remember?

Oh, right…

See—I forget to remember sometimes in the face of where I’m going the path I’ve taken. I don’t see the progress I’m making because I’m always looking forward. I don’t want to look back so badly I forget it’s sometimes good to remind myself I am making progress. Two months ago I posted about having to move out of my apartment—I did it. For years I’ve wanted to work in a new industry, to do something positive for my world—and now I am. See. Progress.

The last time my life fell apart I told myself I wanted to be able to sit on my own couch and watch my own TV in time for my birthday, several months away at the time. It involved me getting a real job at a fake company and moving into the CityPlace apartment I would then leave again just over a year later. But I only missed my mark by a day. One day! Imagine if I’d actually tried at something which actually mattered…

Well—this time I am.

With that in mind, so what if I’m detoured by computer failures? I’ve recovered from worse. Bring it. And so what if I have no time this month for writing or photography? There is always next month. Or the month after that. If I had to work all through June so I could move and work all through July to get settled and work all through August to get rid of all the extra stuff I’ve been moving around with me for the last decade while I figured out what I wanted to do with myself and then toss in a rebuild of a terabyte of data just for fun—we’ve covered this already: bring it.

In fact, all these detours, all these journeys, all these trips, all these trials, all the no time between them—it’s all adding up. I remember something about me now, about how I used to be: unstoppable. It didn’t matter what needed to be done—I’d do it.

Now—where’s my swan or dolphin or rocket ship or whatever it is…?