The Gift of Broken Tools
It's Friday. Friday means fiction around these parts. I hope you had a nice week. I had a pretty calm one that has ended up a bit busy. Not that busy, but busy enough for me to stop putting things on the long finger. One of these things, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, is to finally fix my laptop. Long story short, it is now fixed. I sent it in to get repaired, which took a couple of days. Which meant no laptop for me for a couple of days. And you know what? It was absolute bliss.
My continued intention to write more in my notebook rather than on devices was easier than ever. It was truly wonderful. Admittedly, the next part of the story somewhat negates this premise. I started using an AI journaling app late last year. It has been an interesting experience. It's called Purpose, and it was developed by Mark Manson (of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck fame).
One cool thing it does once you’ve finished a journal entry is give it a title. As you can imagine, this whole laptop-less scenario was a main talking point this week. Once I finished an entry, it gave me a cool title. That title is the title of a poem I wrote about the situation, and it goes like this:
The Gift of Broken Tools
We used to live like cavemen
Back when we were cavemen
We didn’t complain
We had no reason to
Now we live in front of screens
Blue lights and grey before that
And
If we are lucky
Black
I have no high horse to preach from
Because this has been said ad nauseum
“Put the phone down!”
“Live a little”
I get it
We all know it
But we still stare
We still glare
Sometimes we don’t care
There goes my high horse
Just for a moment
Recently, I had a debacle
If that’s not too chaotic a word
It all came to ahead
I squeezed the last bit of life out of my laptop
Now I had to make a change
He wasn’t running like he should be
He hadn’t been for a while
Sometimes it was unbearable
Sometimes it made me smile
I took it to the shop
“At least a day” he told me
That was fine by me
I needed the space
I went home
PC-less
“What can be done now?”
Then I heard it
Silence
Something I hadn’t heard in so long
No humming of engines
No load screens at all
While my main stress was broken
I was not
It was the gift of broken tools
It was a gift of silence
It was the gift of clarity
I hadn’t heard myself think in so long
I was afraid for so long
“What will come out?”
“Will it be shit?”
Thankfully
My brain still had its mojo
I could still think for myself
Everything around me was broken
But I was still standing
I guess that means I won.
Thank you for reading. This was a long one. And thank you for your time.
