What's Important
I woke up this morning dreaming of an evil pc that has been kicking my butt since yesterday morning. This is no ordinary pc. It's newish, so it started out fast enough. But as I worked on it, it became progressively slower until I was bordering on tears. There's no apparent cause other than perhaps Norton Internet Security 2006, but after uninstalling it, I could no longer get the little bugger online whatsoever. No amount of registry searches would explain why. DHCP works, I got the network card working again after installing a mini network, etc. So I go to reinstall the whole damned thing and lo and behold, it hoses the system - now it won't boot into XP, and it keeps hanging on a hardware error that causes a memory dump.
Anyway, that electronic pile of frustration is not the sole reason I write this, although it is the cause of the reasons I write this.
As I said, I woke up this morning dreaming about the evil pc. My mind was working on a solution while I slept, going through all the steps I had taken. As my eyes opened upon the daylight, I realized I could not find any reason to put myself down for not being able to fix it quickly. That realization was quickly and logically followed by a renewed desire to tackle the problem. So I decided to get up. That didn't work, because then I realized I was in Aflac's arms. He woke slightly and smiled that beautiful radiant glowing smile of his. I smiled, too, breaking my thought patterns.
It was at that moment that I found myself actually faced with a dillemma. Do I tear myself from his loving arms and go play on my beloved computers, trying to find a solution, or do I stay, and enjoy his presence until he's off to work? At first I thought the computers would win. It's been in my nature for years to be on them during every waking hour of my life, and it's been somewhat difficult to make a life for myself outside the box, so-to-speak.
But lying there, a soft flotsam of words drifted through my head, a whisper. They were accompanied by faded images I'd created to go with them. In the soft light they emerged before me, wavering, shimmering, delicately balanced on the edge of my mind.
"You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." The image of thorns, and a rose. I think I was recalling this from a song. "People often don't appreciate others 'til it's too late." My coworker, lying in his coffin, looking so not like himself, so still, so unreal. "He was so young." Another person from work, I'd met him a few times, he died in a car accident in his twenties while en route to an airport to see his parents. He left behind his fiancé, too, and a lot of people who would miss him. "It was so stupid." The image of another coworker, a sweet guy, always nodded to everyone in the halls. He'd been with some friends shooting a video and died in a stupid accident that shouldn't have happened. If he'd already finished high school, he had barely done so. "When my husband was alive." This time a former coworker who always talked about her husband as if he had just died yesterday, when in reality it was at least 10 years earlier.
The last image hit me hardest. I heard Aflac's voice: "I can't go on without her." I saw him and a coworker whose friendship I've come to value greatly over the years. Aflac had two little girls with him and he looked so sad and weary, on the verge of tears and/or collapse. One of the girls turned to look right at me, piercing me with her gaze. "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
I stayed with Aflac. At that moment I realized that if I let him go for one second when I could have him with me, I was being stupid and unappreciative of all we've got together. I once had a woman back into my truck at midnight in my own parking lot when I was on my way to see him. No one was hurt, but you just never know what could happen. Aflac drives even farther than I do every day. There are freaky things that happen every day in life. I don't want to be one of those people who says, "You know, I didn't tell him I loved him this morning. And now I can't because he's gone." I can't replace Selene or Raven per se, but they're computers. They don't love me like Aflac does. They don't watch me from afar with a twinkle in their webcams, or hold me gently but securely when I've had a rough time with a computer who refuses to cooperate. I once refused to rely on any computer other than Selene because she was my "firstborn." For the past month she's been sitting next to Raven without a single watt of power going through her, while Raven's share of the workload has more than doubled. I discovered that while Selene will always hold a place in my heart, I can always use another computer to satisfy my creative and geeky outlets. She'll be revamped one day when I have enough time to deal with her flailing 98 configuration, but given my lack of drive to do it right now, it's obvious that computers CAN be replaced after all.
Aflac can't.
If by some miracle life spares us the heartache of an early separation, that would be immensely awesome. But in case it doesn't, I'm not taking chances. Live life, yes. Forsake it, no.
And that's my two cents for the day.
~nv
Anyway, that electronic pile of frustration is not the sole reason I write this, although it is the cause of the reasons I write this.
As I said, I woke up this morning dreaming about the evil pc. My mind was working on a solution while I slept, going through all the steps I had taken. As my eyes opened upon the daylight, I realized I could not find any reason to put myself down for not being able to fix it quickly. That realization was quickly and logically followed by a renewed desire to tackle the problem. So I decided to get up. That didn't work, because then I realized I was in Aflac's arms. He woke slightly and smiled that beautiful radiant glowing smile of his. I smiled, too, breaking my thought patterns.
It was at that moment that I found myself actually faced with a dillemma. Do I tear myself from his loving arms and go play on my beloved computers, trying to find a solution, or do I stay, and enjoy his presence until he's off to work? At first I thought the computers would win. It's been in my nature for years to be on them during every waking hour of my life, and it's been somewhat difficult to make a life for myself outside the box, so-to-speak.
But lying there, a soft flotsam of words drifted through my head, a whisper. They were accompanied by faded images I'd created to go with them. In the soft light they emerged before me, wavering, shimmering, delicately balanced on the edge of my mind.
"You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." The image of thorns, and a rose. I think I was recalling this from a song. "People often don't appreciate others 'til it's too late." My coworker, lying in his coffin, looking so not like himself, so still, so unreal. "He was so young." Another person from work, I'd met him a few times, he died in a car accident in his twenties while en route to an airport to see his parents. He left behind his fiancé, too, and a lot of people who would miss him. "It was so stupid." The image of another coworker, a sweet guy, always nodded to everyone in the halls. He'd been with some friends shooting a video and died in a stupid accident that shouldn't have happened. If he'd already finished high school, he had barely done so. "When my husband was alive." This time a former coworker who always talked about her husband as if he had just died yesterday, when in reality it was at least 10 years earlier.
The last image hit me hardest. I heard Aflac's voice: "I can't go on without her." I saw him and a coworker whose friendship I've come to value greatly over the years. Aflac had two little girls with him and he looked so sad and weary, on the verge of tears and/or collapse. One of the girls turned to look right at me, piercing me with her gaze. "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
I stayed with Aflac. At that moment I realized that if I let him go for one second when I could have him with me, I was being stupid and unappreciative of all we've got together. I once had a woman back into my truck at midnight in my own parking lot when I was on my way to see him. No one was hurt, but you just never know what could happen. Aflac drives even farther than I do every day. There are freaky things that happen every day in life. I don't want to be one of those people who says, "You know, I didn't tell him I loved him this morning. And now I can't because he's gone." I can't replace Selene or Raven per se, but they're computers. They don't love me like Aflac does. They don't watch me from afar with a twinkle in their webcams, or hold me gently but securely when I've had a rough time with a computer who refuses to cooperate. I once refused to rely on any computer other than Selene because she was my "firstborn." For the past month she's been sitting next to Raven without a single watt of power going through her, while Raven's share of the workload has more than doubled. I discovered that while Selene will always hold a place in my heart, I can always use another computer to satisfy my creative and geeky outlets. She'll be revamped one day when I have enough time to deal with her flailing 98 configuration, but given my lack of drive to do it right now, it's obvious that computers CAN be replaced after all.
Aflac can't.
If by some miracle life spares us the heartache of an early separation, that would be immensely awesome. But in case it doesn't, I'm not taking chances. Live life, yes. Forsake it, no.
And that's my two cents for the day.
~nv
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