If only you could see my desk right now – alright I’ll let you. This is it, four hours into a day, when all order and good intentions have melted into delicious, organised chaos.
Many moons ago, when the computer age was just kicking off and my sticky-drawers wooden desk in the newsroom of a large corporation was suddenly carted away and replaced with a “station”, boxed with high padded sides so I couldn’t see or talk to anyone, I was told I was moving into the paperless age. Oh really?
My current desk is a work of art and I adore it, not least for the happy marriage of technology (computer at the heart of it all) with tangible data storage devices, namely, er, pieces of paper, pads books and pin boards.
Alright, so it’s a mess to the untrained eye. But in mitigation all will be straight by the end of the day in readiness for another flurry tomorrow.
My point is this. While far nimbler younger fingers may keep track of all things by means of techno devices I do not.
Technology blogs usually read as if we are all totally wired in, wise and adept at …. it. You know, IT.
The said newspaper corporation had an I.T. department whose main role in life during those turbulent first years seemed to be send my blood pressure off the scale. Since then I have worked overtime to keep up, and my blood pressure down. The IT age is, truly, a wonder and I am a fully-signed up member of the modern world, but I still feel I’m never going make the first team however hard I train.
That makes me one of the several million amazing 50-something small business strivers out there, people who know how to work the web and the mobile and have come a huge distance in a short time on the IT express, but who deep down would like to hold their paper ticket in their hand rather than wave a text message ticket at the conductor.
I keep a big notepad and diary on my desk and a notebook in my pocket or at my bedside. Why? For those creative thoughts that don’t need the flow to be stalled by something turning on or, worse, clouded by my need to concentrate on making the technology work.
So, I’m intrigued. Does that make me odd? I seriously don’t think so. Are you on my wave-length? Then scribble a reminder to yourself to put a comment on this blog tomorrow.
