composition no. 7
I told myself I wouldn't write anymore.
I don't think I told many other people that, maybe about two or three people max. I wasn't ready to go public with such a claim, and instead I hoped my persistent silence would have done all the announcing for me. It was difficult to even admit to myself, that I was sick of the practice, that perhaps the reason the blogs I had made were growing increasingly experimental and self-reflexive was because I couldn't write without becoming painfully-- palpably-- aware of all the parts of writing I feel stifled by. (The impulse in my head telling me "by which I feel stifled" is one of them. My voice is careful and exact, thank you very much, and I will bend whatever grammatical limits I please if it means I can express myself more accurately. "Grammatical rules, not limits," they're limits more than they're rules, this is English, dammit.) Honestly, I'm even kinda sick of starting these posts off with a single provocative line, such as "I told myself I wouldn't write anymore." These things are often referred to as 'stings,' aren't they? They're a glorified marketing gimmick, pulling you into a post for the content of that 'sting' to be developed further in following paragraphs. Stings. Yeah, fuck those, I'm sick of those too.
There's probably lots of things I could address here, like I feel compelled to bring up my previous writing and reflect on it, or on reactions to it, or expand on it, or whatever. Maybe I will do some of that in later posts, written later, much later, or maybe even tomorrow, I make no promises. That's the truth of it, of where I stand with the prospect of "writing new things:" I make no promises. It might make the fans of Rapture sad. I could say a lot of things in response to that response. I could say nothing at all.
Nothing at all. Yeah.
I don't really want to be so silent anymore.
And anyway, I'm skirting around something decidedly more pertinent, something you would agree would have probably been mentioned first if this were some older blog of mine (one with a bigger devotion to something along the lines of 'Formalism'), a little 'something' that's actually why I'm writing again to begin with.
See, I got a new laptop recently. Or, well, it's actually my old laptop, which was my mum's laptop first, and then my brother took the hard drive and motherboard out of the laptop and wired it all into a fancy new desktop, then like a year later he put a new hard drive and motherboard back into the laptop and we gave it back to my mum, but she didn't actually use it, and if I'm gonna visit Quinn again I'll need a portable computer to take with me so she agreed to give me the laptop back, so, let's just call it The Laptop. And the desktop, which is partly made out of component parts that were once The Laptop, let's call it The Desktop.
That's all well and good, except this kinda gets weird.
So The Laptop, as I got it back from mum, still had her credentials on it. No problem, she didn't set any passwords or anything like that, and I installed Opera on it so if she does want to use it again she can just open Chrome like she normally does and her credentials are all there. Except, well see, all I did was install Opera, I didn't have to "sign in" on Opera or anything because Opera's basic like that, I didn't do anything else that required credentials because Setting Up The Laptop was just something I was doing off-and-on at the time, was taking my time with it, I Made No Promises to get it done, not even to myself. I closed the laptop and went back to The Desktop for the night. Following me so far?
So. Why is it that, when I opened up The Laptop for the second time, Windows started off by asking me to login as Rael Fancyhat, a username I haven't used in years?
And why did no password work except for ********* (censored for obvious reasons), the password I do regularly use?
Why, when back when The Laptop was mine before, I didn't even set up any login passwords, and I didn't use the name "Rael Fancyhat,"
why did The Laptop remember me, specifically me, with a personalized combination of login and password I'd never combined, on a brand new hard drive and motherboard? Why does it feel like it somehow recognized me?
Mum didn't set any of that up. The reason she didn't use The Laptop is because she's pretty computer-illiterate (she just sticks with her tablet, which runs Facebook games far more consistently), and I mean, the first time I used The Laptop, it didn't ask for any password, and The Laptop was in my possession the entire time between first and second use. And I swear, I didn't set it up to ask for a password. I kinda hate having to put in a password every time I run a computer. (I can't even un-set this up, because my brother accidentally set up The Laptop with Windows 10 Pro but a license for Windows 10 Home, so The Laptop considers itself unregistered and therefore un-customizable.)
So.
Why? How? What?
How's that for technology gaining awareness?
...
Anyway. This is the kind of scenario that sounds like a perfect setup for some horror-story blog. I thought it was pretty hilarious, a nuisance at worst. And I thought I'd make a blog to share that. Maybe I'll talk more about my current life in later posts, but I had to start the blog off with that anecdote about The Laptop. And, what the hell, how about I end this post in a similarly stereotypical blog-fiction way:
My name is Jordan Dooling, and this is my story.
See you later.
I don't think I told many other people that, maybe about two or three people max. I wasn't ready to go public with such a claim, and instead I hoped my persistent silence would have done all the announcing for me. It was difficult to even admit to myself, that I was sick of the practice, that perhaps the reason the blogs I had made were growing increasingly experimental and self-reflexive was because I couldn't write without becoming painfully-- palpably-- aware of all the parts of writing I feel stifled by. (The impulse in my head telling me "by which I feel stifled" is one of them. My voice is careful and exact, thank you very much, and I will bend whatever grammatical limits I please if it means I can express myself more accurately. "Grammatical rules, not limits," they're limits more than they're rules, this is English, dammit.) Honestly, I'm even kinda sick of starting these posts off with a single provocative line, such as "I told myself I wouldn't write anymore." These things are often referred to as 'stings,' aren't they? They're a glorified marketing gimmick, pulling you into a post for the content of that 'sting' to be developed further in following paragraphs. Stings. Yeah, fuck those, I'm sick of those too.
There's probably lots of things I could address here, like I feel compelled to bring up my previous writing and reflect on it, or on reactions to it, or expand on it, or whatever. Maybe I will do some of that in later posts, written later, much later, or maybe even tomorrow, I make no promises. That's the truth of it, of where I stand with the prospect of "writing new things:" I make no promises. It might make the fans of Rapture sad. I could say a lot of things in response to that response. I could say nothing at all.
Nothing at all. Yeah.
I don't really want to be so silent anymore.
And anyway, I'm skirting around something decidedly more pertinent, something you would agree would have probably been mentioned first if this were some older blog of mine (one with a bigger devotion to something along the lines of 'Formalism'), a little 'something' that's actually why I'm writing again to begin with.
See, I got a new laptop recently. Or, well, it's actually my old laptop, which was my mum's laptop first, and then my brother took the hard drive and motherboard out of the laptop and wired it all into a fancy new desktop, then like a year later he put a new hard drive and motherboard back into the laptop and we gave it back to my mum, but she didn't actually use it, and if I'm gonna visit Quinn again I'll need a portable computer to take with me so she agreed to give me the laptop back, so, let's just call it The Laptop. And the desktop, which is partly made out of component parts that were once The Laptop, let's call it The Desktop.
That's all well and good, except this kinda gets weird.
So The Laptop, as I got it back from mum, still had her credentials on it. No problem, she didn't set any passwords or anything like that, and I installed Opera on it so if she does want to use it again she can just open Chrome like she normally does and her credentials are all there. Except, well see, all I did was install Opera, I didn't have to "sign in" on Opera or anything because Opera's basic like that, I didn't do anything else that required credentials because Setting Up The Laptop was just something I was doing off-and-on at the time, was taking my time with it, I Made No Promises to get it done, not even to myself. I closed the laptop and went back to The Desktop for the night. Following me so far?
So. Why is it that, when I opened up The Laptop for the second time, Windows started off by asking me to login as Rael Fancyhat, a username I haven't used in years?
And why did no password work except for ********* (censored for obvious reasons), the password I do regularly use?
Why, when back when The Laptop was mine before, I didn't even set up any login passwords, and I didn't use the name "Rael Fancyhat,"
why did The Laptop remember me, specifically me, with a personalized combination of login and password I'd never combined, on a brand new hard drive and motherboard? Why does it feel like it somehow recognized me?
Mum didn't set any of that up. The reason she didn't use The Laptop is because she's pretty computer-illiterate (she just sticks with her tablet, which runs Facebook games far more consistently), and I mean, the first time I used The Laptop, it didn't ask for any password, and The Laptop was in my possession the entire time between first and second use. And I swear, I didn't set it up to ask for a password. I kinda hate having to put in a password every time I run a computer. (I can't even un-set this up, because my brother accidentally set up The Laptop with Windows 10 Pro but a license for Windows 10 Home, so The Laptop considers itself unregistered and therefore un-customizable.)
So.
Why? How? What?
How's that for technology gaining awareness?
...
Anyway. This is the kind of scenario that sounds like a perfect setup for some horror-story blog. I thought it was pretty hilarious, a nuisance at worst. And I thought I'd make a blog to share that. Maybe I'll talk more about my current life in later posts, but I had to start the blog off with that anecdote about The Laptop. And, what the hell, how about I end this post in a similarly stereotypical blog-fiction way:
My name is Jordan Dooling, and this is my story.
See you later.
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