New Beginnings

As we welcome in the New Year many people choose to make resolutions to change certain aspects of their life.  For some ‘Out with the Old and In With the New’ is an exhilarating experience and they embrace the opportunity with enthusiasm. Others are slow to warm up so adapting to ‘New and Different’ can be stressful and demanding even when the change is an improvement. I generally fall into the latter category.

For me this New Year brings a new laptop (Happy Birthday to me) and along with it a mixture of excitement and frustration.  My new laptop has a beautiful brown earth tone color which is visually appealing to me, and it is super fast compared to my old one – an aspect that will be greatly appreciated.  It also has a new, very stubborn, operating system that doesn’t want to let me do things the way I am accustomed to doing them.  In this battle so far the computer is winning as I was up until 2 am – not ringing in the New Year – just desperately trying to synch new and old.

I’ve finally installed the 2007 version of Word that we bought long ago but I never installed because I was working on my CBA portfolio and felt learning to use the new program would just be disruptive.  Even after completing my portfolio the time just never seemed ‘right’ and besides, the old version was working fine and I was comfortable using it – told you I was slow to warm up.

So I sit here at my desk, old laptop and new laptop side by side, importing and exporting, trying and retrying, sometimes successful and sometimes not.  Other household tasks go uncompleted, partially because I am too busy but also because according to my computer there are no ‘To Do’ items due before 2013.  Maybe this is due to an importing error even though I’ve retried it several times – secretly I believe my computer is trying to tell me it will be years before I finish setting things up here.

Still, I vow not to be defeated. Instead, I remind myself of the optimism of the 5 year old who whispered “Welcome to life” as she gently poured water over the soil containing the seed she had just planted.  This too is a new beginning.