The First Shuffle

When do I stop doing this?

Starting is easy. Stopping is not. Starting an addiction is as easy as having a bad day and needing something to help forget it. The new thing. The thing to make life easier. After all, there’s a need for that new thing. Something to forget that lousy day? Something to make life easier? There are times, in fact, that something new and novel is necessary.

The old stuff isn’t working anymore. The rolodex is stained beyond legibility. The day calendar is covered in beer, coffee, whiskey and cigarette stains. Some of the months are analogous to your memory in that they are missing. Torn out. Tossed aside in a fit of frustrated inability to write down what should have happened instead of what did happen. Or worse… writing down appointments you actually did keep as opposed to the ones that you planned to keep, and they all had to do with putting out that fire your friend started and then cleaning up the aftermath instead of building that dream cottage on the beach with a place for a fridge full of beer and margaritas.

The journal is a wire bound high school ruled notebook written in with number 2 pencil, a pen found on the sidewalk, and sometimes something that may or may not be blood (but for certain isn’t graphite or ink). This is where the best thoughts of the day end up? In the same place some kid is dashing out heartfelt poems and doodling bleeding hearts?

This stuff is a MESS! Piles of stained paper. Paper. Good technology. Tried and true. Textural in nature. Smells. Feels. Cam be held. Exist. Good stuff. Messy stuff. It’s a MESS! Needs a place to BE. Needs a place to stay. Needs physical space. Collects dust. Oh paper, how much love there is for you, yet how much hate.

Paper isn’t going to end here, though. Paper is just going to start being a part of something new. Something more. Something with more demanding needs, but something with a mighty high payoff. Paper and the computer are going to be pals. Like the good old days. Like the 80s when paper held computer’s hand and led computer into a strange, scary forest of new creatures and new people. New people that liked computer A LOT. A little too much. People that liked to hang out with computer so much that paper wondered how those years passed so quick and so many drunken nights happened until one morning paper woke up alone ten years behind computer with no retirement plan. Paper got dumped.

This story isn’t about paper, though. This story is about how, exactly, to make a decision. How to decide on when it’s finally time to start looking for that technology to solve that problem. This Palm Pilot was good enough then. Why isn’t it good enough now? This Blue iMac was good enough then. Why isn’t it good enough now? All manner of things once were good enough and mysteriously, now, they aren’t. The Palm Pilot evokes wide eyes and provokes the same reaction as a slide rule or abacus. The Blue iMac is remembered in a “I had one of those!” moments. But… but… but… it all still works! What’s happening? Why can’t it still work?

Because it all moves as fast as what it moves. And it moves data. Data moves fast now. Very, very fast. Accelerating along with the unstoppable tide of time and human desire. SCORCHING ahead. Burning. Causing the hand to pull back in pain. The head spins dizzily and this thing start to feel heavy and slow. And worse. It feels worse. It won’t stay on long. It’s big. It’s got that… color. It’s beige. Or gray. Or blue. But is that a reason to just toss it aside? Oh yes, yes, yes it is. It isn’t the only reason. It isn’t keeping up. With thinking. With viewing. With adapting. Those other things that aren’t so set in stone, they are.

What is next? There has to be something next. The next thing to try that works. That, for a little while, will serve a purpose. No! Serve THE purpose! The purpose to keep up with it all. The purpose to profit. The purpose to take those damn ideas and keep them. NO! Not keep them. Cultivate them. Make them grow. Make them into things that themselves have purpose.

What is here isn’t working. The deck needs shuffled. A new card has to be pulled from the deck.

Next time, I’m going to pull a new card from the deck.