Tower to Trenches
I took my car in for service this morning, and I’m now driving a 2009 blue Acura TSX loaner car. I feel surprisingly altered driving it. I fit in it differently. The brakes respond differently. The ride is different. I actually forgot to put my seat belt on before I drove away from the dealership, that’s how disrupted my automatic routines were. Even a small change can be a big interruption to daily unconscious patterns.
That seems like a good segue to what I’ve been needing to write about for days: changes I am making in my direction, my responses to those changes, and the effects of those changes on Tower to Trenches. Some of these changes stem from technological reality; others from changes in me.
So first, the eas(ier) part: technology. Everyone understands that technology is both a gift and a curse. Having been enjoying the gift part for a while, I am now due for my turn at the curse--when good technology goes bad. I have been using the Mac with operating system Tiger, the one coming before Leopard. Leopard has since given way to Snow Leopard, so I am now two behind. I always anticipated upgrading, even wished for it, but I hesitated because changes in the accompanying software will affect my website. I did not trust that the transition would be seamless.
Several times I spoke to people at Mac—technicians on the help line, sales people at the store, even someone at the Genius Bar (if you can’t trust a Genius, what are you to do?) I posed the same question each time: “if I upgrade, will my website carry over without problems to the new version of iWeb?”
And each time, the answer I got was, “(pause) it should” (vocal tone lacking conviction).
Should. That was not the answer I wanted. The answer I wanted was, “Absolutely!” Or, “Definitely!” Or, “No question!” Or even, “What a silly question—of course it will—this is a Mac!” Laugh at me for even asking. But assure me with a definitive response.
I got a conditional when I wanted an indicative. I got a hint of possible trouble when I wanted a guarantee of success.
The conditional mode, like its relative the subjunctive, is not high on most people’s lists of important things to learn in school, and it is given little space in our memory banks. I learned about the subjunctive—like nearly everything grammatical that I know—from years of Latin and some Homeric Greek. In case you are curious, a form that stands out as a good (identifiable) subjunctive is the unconjugated “be,” as in, “I request that you be on time for our meeting.” (The subjunctive is on my mind at the moment from having just seen a wonderful French film, Entre les Murs—translation: The Class—which includes a scene in which students argue about the modern value of such a verb mode.)
Back to my story and the conditional “should”... The conditional expresses just what its name implies—possibilities that depend on conditions. One grammar book talked about “hesitating affirmation.”
So here I am, approaching upgrade, with only hesitating affirmation to assure me that after the download—the computer equivalent to surgery on your internal organs—my website will be intact. Is it any wonder that I put off the event?
I might have continued to procrastinate, but the technology took matters into its own hand, the way all equipment ultimately does. The software became sick. I discovered that my changes would not load properly, and special icons to confirm formatting did not work. I began to lose features—the counter on the site disappeared, never to return. Error messages repeated themselves tirelessly. I had to go back and forth between multiple computers to ensure that my writing had, in fact, made it through to the site.
I do not arrive at change easily (I believe I’ve mentioned this before...), but there are times in life when even I will take a risk I’ve been avoiding. Often something pushes me out of my comfort zone—like my software going bad—and I wake up saying, “I’m ready.”
With this entry, I am saying, “I am ready. The upgrade is coming.” But there is another piece to this story. As I indicated at the beginning of this entry, the changes that are coming are not just technological. No matter what happens to my software and operating system, I am making changes to my direction, which will affect this website. And while the technology makes me anxious, the more personal changes are what give me the feeling that I am driving a new car, with a new fit and a new ride. To learn about this new ride—and, I hope, join me in it—stay tuned for the next entry.
Going Soft
