Tuesday, June 10, 2008

I'd like to give up my computer

I will admit to passing through some odd phases and I am currently working my way through one at the present time. But if I were to carry my current thoughts through to their conclusion, it would be like severing my own throat (sorry about the wording. I'm probably still thinking about yesterday's blog) in that I'd like to get rid of my computer. Or at the very least relegate it to a corner of the room where it gets switched on just once a week.
You see, my Apple Mac (or both of them actually) is alive (!) twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and I live and breath at the keyboard, something which is probably not good for me both physically and mentally. Or even spiritually probably! It has become my best friend and I recognise that as a failing.
Besides that, the tools I use, Word, Photoshop, Indesign, Painter and others, I have this feeling, that despite what the blurb says, these programs actually restrict my creativity, not enhance them. Why? Because I have to operate within the parameters of other people's programming and besides, I have to learn to use them by obeying other people's rules. One cannot get simpler than a piece of paper and a pencil. Oh, how I should like to be able to use it for just printing out a final version of a novel! Because that's what its good at.
Of course though, nothing exists in a vacuum and so I would have to ask myself, what would I do with all my free time? Yes, all the time I spend answering emails and writing blogs and articles? Well, I'll tell you. I'd begin to learn the piano once again, I'd take up water-colour landscape painting, I'd move to Cornwall and live a much simpler life, I'd walk a lot in the rain and mist, I'd just sit a great deal and do nothing but stare at the scenery, I'd enjoy the money that I would save, I'd do bookbinding, making special, hard-backed copies of my novels for friends and I would free myself from this open prison that we have all brought into. Some obviously more than others!
Will it happen? Could I get rid of my computer, my cynosure of my life? That would be like giving up hard drugs. But how beautifully simple life would be after. No more computer crashes, no more gnashing of teeth, wishing to toss the damn thing out of the window when it went wrong! No more expensive upgrading. No more technological problems. Just pure freedom with the simpler and free things in life. What a dreamer I am. Probably just another phase.

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