The New Computer
I got a new computer for my birthday a couple of months ago.
Generally, large changes drive me batshit. I am not a fan of change. Even good & necessary changes make me cranky and leave me feeling off-balance. (Back in college, when I moved every year, there was the 3 month ramp up to moving - in which I got progressively more stressed out and short-tempered - and the 3 month ramp down from moving - in which I gradually relaxed. I finally noticed the pattern around my 3rd move.)
Thus, moving all of my stuff over to a new computer and reinstalling all my programs and so forth... well, I dragged my heels long enough that, let's just say the BF forced me into it.
(No, he didn't hold me down - he did it by removing my old computer, stripping my disks out of it, and then stickin' them on the new computer via a funky USB cable so I could move data over. Then he gave away my old computer, just to be sure, and to have one less thing cluttering the house.)
He did this, of course, right around the same time Apocalypse was going away and the good-money IT contract I'm working ramped up to needing a lot of time. So not only was I stressed by two major changes, but I had no time to cope with them as I was working 6-7 days a week, spending anywhere from 3 to 14 hours a day on multiple jobs. I didn't want to pull over all my files from Apocalypse onto the old computer when I was about to switch, but then I couldn't get myself to ACTUALLY switch to the new computer, so... just as well that he forced the issue before Apocalypse actually went away.
(It turned out that logging into Apocalypse was more than a habit - it was part of my brain, an element of my personality; I had no idea how much it was a part of my life until I tried to remove it; 14 YEARS is a long time to have one email address).
But I finally feel like I'm happy with the new computer. Partly because I did a massive clean-up of my music files (I'm using iTunes), but mainly because this thing rips CDs like a MOFO! Very VERY cool.
Anyway, I'm still not sure I've copied all my files from the old disk to the new disk as it threw errors during the last BIG COPY attempt. But my work files are here, as well as the Somerville Garden Club stuff and a few other things that I use constantly. And we installed the second disk (where all my media files live, including my music) into the new computer instead of moving everything off of it onto the main disk that came with the new one. I spent a bunch of tonight reorganizing my music and burning CDs I've bought in the last 3-4 months like crazy.
I think I'm well into my ramp-down period of getting used to the changes now that I've reinstalled most everything that I used constantly. There's still shit to do, but this festering swamp of worry in the back of my mind is finally settling out to a few specific problem areas. I didn't really realize how much brain space it was taking up until I started writing this note and feeling the easing of tension. Interesting.