A Life Less Ordinary
Trigger warning: this post starts out all nice, but gets a bit grim towards the end. Sorry.
I deactivated three of my Instagram accounts today, part of a general clean-up of my social media presence. The pressure of keeping those accounts going when really I don't do so much photography these days was a bit too much; it sort of underlines a general jadedness I feel with photography generally.
I've written about it before so I'll not go over it again here, but it felt food to finally let go of something that was holding me back. I've deactivated the accounts so should my feelings change in the next wee while I can always come back to it, but for now, that's them gone.
Today at work was incredibly boring. We had the sprint reviews all morning which are compulsory meetings for the IT leads, like me, but you're not expected to contribute, just listen, so the first four hours, from the start of the day till lunchtime were just spent with a set of headphones on, listening but not really watching. The rest of the work day wasn't any more exciting. By about 3pm I was so bored I actually contemplated going to the shops for a some doughnuts or other nice snacks. My brain and body were craving something nice as a reward for sitting through the day. I relented - I still have the chili from last night to look forward too - and I am proud of myself for doing so, but I should probably reflect how I got that far in the first place. What has me so bored that I will wreck my own body with garbage just for a few seconds of enjoyment, or satisfaction?
Later on the day I got a few notifications from Google telling me there was a critical security breach, and that I need to change my passwords immediately. It was actually quite scary, truth be told, so I did what they asked me to - changed my passwords, force logged myself out of everything to do with Google and hope for the best. Earlier this morning I got a message from my Brave browser telling me that one of the extensions I use - it converts images to another format - contains malware and had been disabled. I wonder if the two were related, but I think more a case of coincidence than anything sinister but I will keep a close eye on things.
After that, I closed a few support tickets with "cannot reproduce" because "cannot be bothered checking" is not an option. I'll take my chances. And that wrapped up my working day.
K. went to town and bought a nice Mac Neo. They're so cheap these days, €699. If I wasn't so invested in the Windows laptop I have (i.e., the games), and if I didn't find Macs so hard to use then I'd probably get one myself. I actually had a MacBook Air when I started at my current company. All Heads-of got one. I had never used a Mac before and while it looks great and the UI is nice, I found it a pain in the hole to use. Didn't help either that it was really heavy, so I returned it for a Windows 11 laptop - the one I am writing this on - and never looked back. I got called by the Head of IT, wondering if I was alright. Apparently, no one in all his years of working had ever returned a MacBook for a Windows laptop.
Quick question: Is there an etiquette for how long blog posts are supposed to be?
I ask, because looking around I see that the majority of posts on here are quite short, whereas I tend to ramble on a bit. Comes from not really having anyone to talk to during the day. I sometimes feel like one of those old ladies in an Alan Bennett monologue, talking non-stop about everything and nothing.
I do feel sorry for any reader that has made it this far, it can't have been easy, waiting for some sort of insightful nugget, or useful information. But the truth is that life for the most part very mundane. We can't all be James Bond. For most of us, life grinds on. But I do think it's important to record these days, even when nothing happens.
We all live such ordinary lives, forgotten in the tidal wave of humanity. And in this day and age, it’s so easy for it all to end, quickly, and anonymously. All it takes is a jump, a fall, a trip, a fight, the dog next door, a burst riverbank, or the man with the rucksack on your train. When crossing the road, when getting on a plane, when getting in a car, when choking on a sandwich, too much sun, blood in the stool, or a heart attack in the middle of the night.
In some ways, our online presence, like this blog, is like a digital memorial, something that swings for the fences of immortality, something that says “I was here, and I existed”.
It is not enough.