General Lunacy

Tale of a (Slowly Reforming) Luddite

I have a confession to make. Shh, come closer, my pet; let me whisper it in your ear, for it is mildly embarrassing.

I’m a wee bit of a Luddite. As in, resistant to technological progress. Or most kinds of progress.

There’s no denying I’m always late to the party when it comes to, oh, everything. I jumped on the Alternative music bandwagon just after Kurt Cobain’s suicide (although to be fair I was only eleven when he died). I stubbornly hand wrote my papers through high school, even though we had a computer and typing would have been so much quicker than forcing out my Palmer-method script. I didn’t get a cell phone until I was nineteen, and even then only because it was free if my parents put me on the family plan and what else were they going to do with a fourth phone if they didn’t force me to use it? I refused to wear skinny jeans with my boots until my faux pas became reason for severe chagrin.  I hung onto MySpace way too long after Facebook became the social media outlet of choice among my peers. I just started watching Mad Men a few months back. I still refuse to wear fluorescent ANYTHING, despite it being the hip thing to do.

Sorry pre-pubescent girls, fluorescents belong solely in eighties, along with shoulder pads and General Public.

I am never on the cutting edge of anything.

So needless to say, I came to the world of blogging late in life. As in, this year. More specifically, March of this year, when I started reading The BloggessI’d peruse The Art of Non-Conformity occasionally in the years preceding to help bolster my rejection of the cubicle life style, but no more frequently than during the odd bout of dissatisfaction with life coupled with ambition to do something better. And I never left a comment.

When I used to tell people I wanted to be a writer, they would always suggest “Natti, you should start a blog!” I’d shrug them off, like I was superior to that whole movement.

“Oh yeah, that. The whole blog thing is just a fad, it’ll die out. I want to write novels. Real writers write novels, or short stories, or collections of erotic poetry.”

Mostly I didn’t know what I was talking about.

My point is, for some reason I have a “make do or do without” mentality toward technology and other new-fangled ideas, like Bluetooth or Cable Television – boy, will I be relieved when that fad finally dies out. We’ve lived this long without up-to-the-minute access to Showtime, we’ll survive without it, I think stubbornly to myself.

You’d think I grew up in Depression-era Nebraska.

Anyway, I am always convinced we can live without “it,” whatever “it” may be…that is, until I get a taste of life with “it.” When I finally got the memo that nobody really succeeded as a writer without an online presence unless they were Herman Wouk, I realized I needed to suck it up and at least look into the whole blogging phenomenon.

And now? Totally cannot picture my life without this little treasured space where my blog lives. It is my infant love, which brings joy to my heart and causes sleepless nights, much like a real infant, only with less pooping.

[Leaving myself wide open for “but your blog sure is full of shit!” comments. Beat you to it, guys.]

So my experience with blogging came around the same way I came around to the side of the smart phone last year. How did I ever manage without one?

The next time I resist a really brilliant technological advance, call me on it by reminding me how much happiness and fulfillment my blog has provided.

Unless you’re trying to talk me into getting cable. Sorry, my friends, you’re fighting a losing battle with that one.

 

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