Sunday, February 20, 2011

New beginnings

I wonder sometimes what life would be like without the internet. We are so dependent on it these days. Even more so working as a manuscript editor wherever I happen to be. Not to mention that where I often happen to be is in transit or in Africa.

I can remember hauling my typewriter to India many years ago and buying a year's worth of new ink cartridges and paper. I think most of the cartridges were thrown away because it coincided with the development of portable computers. Or at least my purchase of one.

I have had about five laptops in 20 years. Greg says they need to be replaced every two years because they develop so much. One wonders if at some point they will be so developed they stay as they are.

All I know is that my work, my life, my accounts are now all pretty much online and without a laptop and the net I am handicapped. Which is why when something goes wrong there is that sense of horror.... irrational of course because at worst one just buys another one.... that one is somehow cut off.

I was thinking the other week about buying a backup laptop but that is ridiculous, expensive and a sign of obsession. I was however glad to see the arrival of my new laptop to replace the old one which had been malfunctioning. Needless to say, in that way of it when you take a sick child to the doctor they are suddenly well, or lean the axe up against the lemon tree which will not fruit, as soon as I knew my laptop replacement was on the way the old one began to behave perfectly!

Today I am in the process of setting up my new laptop. One of Greg's colleagues brought it up from the Perth office where Hewlett Packard had finally, after more than six months, decided to replace it under warranty because it was overheating and the hard drive had problems.

Here's hoping that all will work as it should although with a strongly Uranian chart I also know that I have an energy impact upon things, including my laptop. While it was clear that the previous one had problems and it had them from the very beginning, before any of my Uranian energy could get to work up close, I do know that inner harmony means outer harmony for all things electrical in my world.

The work continues on that count. The biggest inconvenience is that I do not know how, even if it were possible, to transfer my astrological data over so my information will need to be entered, again, manually.

Most of my writing this week has been poetry with submissions to two Poetry groups, Poetry Pact and Writing Our Way Home. There is no doubt that they provide incentive to write. I have wanted to get back to my poetry for years and finally I am doing it. The sites themselves can be a distraction because conversations and discussions emerge, but, sitting here in Malawi I probably need distractions.

2 Comments:

Blogger Stephanie Faris said...

I can't imagine writing on a typewriter. I had to use one for papers in high school and college but those were only 2-5 pages... If you made a mistake and needed to delete an entire paragraph, you'd have to retype the rest of the manuscript, I'm assuming?

5:52 AM  
Blogger Roslyn Ross said...

Actually by the time I was doing a lot of writing on a type-writer there were corrector ribbons. You just went back to the incorrect letter or words and typed over them and they were removed. Then again, I learned to touch-type very fast and very accurately so there are actually very few errors if you can do that. In terms of writing though, yes, you would have to edit by hand.... I worked as a sub-editor as a journalist and then the copy is re-typed. In a way, as an individual, it was a good way to edit your work carefully. As a sub-editor you returned the amended copy to the reporter or writer for changing.

9:36 PM  

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