The last couple of days I've done something I absolutely hate to do; namely tinkering with technologies I'm not overly familiar with. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm the worst student ever and a complete and utter brat when it comes to learning things I'm not innately gifted with. Hombrelibre still shudders at the memory of teaching me to drive. As a result, I'm pretty much self-taught in almost everything I do. And sometimes it really shows.
Yesterday I was burning pictures onto disks, which is at about an ape-level skillset but something that regularly flumoxes me. It's not as if I haven't done it before, but every computer has their own set of drama associated with different programs and what not and I was burning massive files and a shit-ton of snaps which only complicated the matter. After a lot of tinkering and swearing I finally got three disks burned, then just about had a coronary when my coworker couldn't open them. Much like in setting up a blind date, you had to make sure the fuckers are compatible.
Today I was creating a flier in InDesign, which again, isn't altogether that challenging but definitely a program I have just enough familiarity with to be dangerous. I was patting myself on the back for remembering how to text wrap and color match but my flier still looked painfully amateurish. I'm such a design snob that my inability to create something truly spectacular made me want to rip out my eyes and fling them at the screen, which makes about as much sense as a beginning piano student blowing their head off for not mastering Chopin. Welcome to the Virgo brain.
In any case, all of this strang und durm got me thinking about how many of the skills I learned while growing up are rapidly growing obsolete. I'm not even 30. I wonder how the 80 years olds feel right about now with all those crazy kids and their cell phones and blackberries and Ipods, texting a collective "the future is now" while we stand hopelessly by.
My 60 year old coworker, whose methodology pains me at times, is like a walking billboard for obsolescence. She prints out every single email she gets and diligently files them. I caught her the other day printing out websites for reference. I don't think she knows how to cut and paste, much less resize a picture. And none of this would really matter if she weren't in a department that depends explicitly on all of these technologies. Lately, I've noticed my rage toward her verges on the irrational. Granted, she has a nasty habit of singing classic show tunes at full tilt pre-9 a.m. which is no doubt grounds for murder in some countries, but my knee-jerk vitriol at her inability to navigate powerpoint may belie some deeper impulse in me.
One might surmise that she represents everything I'm starting to fear as I creep toward my next decade of life. That I'll be somehow left behind, rapture-style, as the young and clever are sucked toward career heaven, leaving me to languish in early-thirties purgatory. No longer young, not quite old, I fear I'll dog paddle my way through the next chunk of my life, clinging to my proverbial MySpace as the kids gravitate toward Facebook. Or whatever the hell they like these days. I can't keep track.
