Lately I’ve been using three laptops.
One for my full-time job, one for my freelance gigs, and one for my personal (and, I’d like to think, more creative) pursuits.
The most powerful of the three is the newest, although I could tell right away when the IT guy handed it to me -- when I first visited my new place of employment -- that it wasn’t brand new. The second one might be significantly older than the first, but it still has enough juice to play old games with, and index books with, and listen to streaming music with -- I just have to leave it plugged in, because the battery has seen better days. The third one is the oldest, running on an ancient Pentium processor, but still better than the PC assigned to me many years ago when I used to work for a publishing company in the Philippines -- but that’s another (hilarious) story.
When I fire up the first laptop, which I do every morning from Monday to Friday (but now, more increasingly, also during weekends), I feel a sense of dread. I use it to write, sure, but also to attend Teams meetings and reply to emails and take what seems like never-ending online trainings. The writing part is increasingly being overtaken by the other non-essential things, which makes me wonder why my newest place of employment even bothered to hire a writer in the first place. But then again, that’s another (sad) story.
When I turn on the second laptop, there’s no sense of dread -- I index books on autopilot now; it’s like second nature. Many years ago when I worked as a copyeditor for that publishing company with the crappy PCs, there was only a handful of us who genuinely enjoyed indexing books. We used to joke that it was a menial job -- not as “intellectual” as editing -- but that someone had to do it. That someone was -- still is -- me. I relish indexing now as I relished it then, and I relish it more than ever because it’s a break from all those non-essential things I do on my first laptop.
It’s when I use the third laptop though -- the oldest and slowest, I don’t even connect it to the Internet anymore; it’s strictly a tool for writing and nothing more -- that I feel the most joy. It’s when I feel I’m making a difference, even though I haven’t gathered enough confidence yet to show the world the stuff I’d worked on all these years.
I remember a scene in one of the episodes of “Better Call Saul” when Jimmy McGill reluctantly accepted a job at Davis & Main, and Jimmy stumbled upon founder Clifford Main playing the guitar in his office. Clifford said he plays music “to blow off steam” and advised Jimmy to find a similar hobby, as working for a high-powered law firm is a stressful job. Jimmy eventually found and bought a used bagpipe from a pawnshop, which in turn he played in his own office (Jimmy being Jimmy – or, should I say, Saul being Saul?), but -- as viewers who’ve already seen the episode know -- not to blow off steam but something else.
Anyway, I fired up the old laptop to blow off steam myself. I’m the type of person who can’t sleep when I’m stressed, and when I overthink I tend to write. But for some reason the words to build one of the things I’m not ready to show the world yet wouldn’t come. So I decided to pivot (I hate this fucking word; it’s one of those words I frequently hear when I use my first laptop, along with “bandwidth,” “core competencies,” “leverage,” “low-hanging fruit,” “deliverables,” “synergy,” “deep dive,” etc.).
This decision to “pivot” is a plea to everyone out there who has their own version of my third laptop: a guitar, a pen, a paintbrush, a tennis racket, a book, a gaming controller or, heck, a fucking BAGPIPE.
Go to that version of your third laptop as frequently as you can. And relish it as much as I do whenever I build one of those things that I’m not ready to show the world yet. Relish it as much as Cliff Main did with his guitar, as much as Jimmy McGill relished playing his bagpipe just to fuck up the establishment.
Maybe someday we’ll wake up, and by a miracle of miracles the world won’t require us to fire up that primary laptop anymore (full of those “essential” non-essentials and hated corporate jargon) -- or whatever its equivalent is in your own working life -- just to help keep those poor billionaires (who, by the way, love funding genocides and wars) “afloat,” eh?
