Me & My Tech

My father used to annoy me intensely when he was old & widowed by saying "it passes the time" when I suggested an outing. At the time, "time" was the one thing I didn't have. My father & mother in law were in their 80's & needed a lot of help. We had moved him to live nearer to us, but she still lived in the Midlands. My husband & I were both only children & had busy, professional jobs & lives. 

It's fair to say that neither of them had much in the way of interests & hobbies. The lives of that generation of "working class" people didn't really include much other than routine & getting by. So if we suggested a day out it was annoying to say the least to get a response like "if you like". 

40 odd years on & I'm in a similar position. Widowed & living alone. My life is very different though. 

Although I have no family apart from a daughter, her husband & 2 grandsons, I do have quite a lot of good friends & aquaintances. That wasn't true for my parents or parents in law. Basically they had neighbours. I meet a lot of people by swimming at the leisure centre & volunteering at the community centre. I have travelled the world & experienced many different cultures. I have worked in Nepal & Malawi. I enjoy going to museums & art galleries, reading, swimming, socialising....Just managing my complex life is a full time job! To do that I use tech a lot.

I have a desktop, a new mobile phone, an iPad, a smart doorbell, smart TV's & a smart speaker. My gizmos are smarter than I am! That's just as well because my brain is past it's "best before date". I do most things on line & am reasonably competent. In theory that should save me time, but often it doesn't. I regularly get into "black hole" tech problems. It can be a huge waste of time & extremely frustrating. Problems that would be quick to sort out if you could speak to a human lead you into a rabbit warren of phone choices, password & security checks, menu selections & stumbling blocks that are not intuitive to navigate.

The world has changed. In many ways it is so much better than my parents world or even mine 20 - 30 years ago. We humans are clever & inventive. We adapt to changing situations. 

I have just spent days trying to migrate from an old mobile to a new one & then from one mobile network to another. It has not been an enjoyable experience. At the moment I'm not sure whether I'm chuffed to have finally done it or furious that it wasted so much of my time. At least I can get it out of my system by posting in my Blog on my computer.