Yep, that’s my laptop. Last week I pulled my trusty Toshiba laptop out of my bag to discover that the casing had come loose due to a malfunctioning hinge. Damn.
Said malfunctioning hinge makes the laptop difficult to open and close, and has caused the screen to become popped out of its casing. In my attempts to maneuver it back in, I cracked the corner of the screen (d’oh!) as you can see here. The laptop is still usable, and the screen crack nearly invisible in most situations, but the opening/closing difficulty makes it cumbersome and dangerous to transport. That’s a problem because I use my laptop at my Day Job every day to plan and carry out my university English lessons through the magic of PowerPoint and the student textbook app.
Fortunately I did some asking around the department and my boss was able to get me an English company laptop to use, which covers my Day Job computer problem nicely and also means I don’t have to navigate Japanese Windows functions during lessons. My trusty Toshiba laptop will be confined to my apartment (where I’m posting this!) until I get back to the States, at which point I’ll buy a replacement. That’s the plan for now.
The experience, though, made me think a LOT about how much we rely not only on our devices, but on the tools of our creative trade: the way a musician relies on their instrument, an artist on their paintbrushes, a potter on their wheel. In my case I do the vast majority of my creative work on this laptop, so it outranks my notebooks and even my trusty blue pens in importance for taking care of not only my creative work, but my life in general (personal emails, video calls, etc.).
When I saw the damage my first impulse was panic, followed by a resilient drive to address the situation. I took the laptop home and spent an hour inspecting the damage and trying to resolve it, then spent more time researching a Japanese computer repair shop, taking it to said repair shop, and navigating repair-lingo Japanese only to discover that it would be too difficult to replace. I also had to talk to my boss about the replacement computer, go through the procurement process, and set it up with my work info, which took more time.
All that work together took 6 or so hours by my count. Not only was that valuable time I could have been spending on other things, the worry and mental exhaustion put me in a bad state of mind for getting my creative work done, so let’s call that another 4 hours lost, for a total of 10 hours. Not a good week at all.
What Can We Learn From This?
The broken laptop incident demonstrates how important it is to have a backup plan when malfunctions happen. Though using the replacement computer for my Day Job and keeping my broken laptop at home for creative work and general use was ultimately the best solution, my other plans for computer access included investigating a repair shop (as I mentioned), using the local internet cafe, borrowing Japanese laptops from the university, and ordering a new laptop from either the States or within Japan.
If I’d had another laptop I could have used easily, I wouldn’t have had to worry about any of that.
The incident also shows how reliant we are on our electronic devices, and how mentally distressing it can be when something goes wrong with them. I’ve blogged at length about the dependent relationship I have with my phone, but I don’t think about the relationship I have with my laptop as much, even though I use it more often, and for more things.
A few weeks ago I asked my students how they would feel if they lost their phones, and a lot of them said they would feel nervous, panicked, or like they had to find them right away. That kind of heightened emotional reaction can be draining, and interfere with other parts of your life—like your creative work.
It also suggests the role of money in this kind of problem: if I had more money and were more well-off, I would probably have bought a new laptop a year ago or more instead of continuing to use this one (which, as much as I love it, is showing signs of age). Or I’d have a backup device that maybe I didn’t use that much, or I would have kept this laptop as a backup.
In short, people with stronger financial situations can often avoid these problems all together, while people who are less well-off will deal with them more often, putting them farther behind the people with more money.
Finally, my ideal solution came in the form of a company replacement laptop, which also suggests that companies who implement use-your-own-device programs should ALWAYS supplement them with extra devices for people with limited means, or when something goes wrong . While use-your-own-device programs are convenient for many (especially when your workplace devices are in a foreign language!), it pays to have backups.
So that’s where things stand now. My trusty Toshiba laptop is still functioning from a desk position and nearly ready for retirement after 6 and a half years (!) of loyal service, I’m feeling better about the whole thing now that I have a plan, and I’m going to end this post here because I’m behind this week.
Hope your own technology is doing better than mine, everybody ;-)