Over a year ago, in July 2015, inside my house at Gamone, I suffered a severe accident. After consuming a little too much tasty white wine in the warm weather, I fell down the stairs and bumped my head. As a doctor told me later, I could have easily killed myself. My son
François assumed the harsh task of taking a train from Brittany down to my region, and then driving me and my dog back up to Brittany. There, I was housed and cared for, not only by my son, but also by his mother Christine and her companion Michel. It was rough work for them, for several months, since I wasn’t an easy patient. To cut a long story short, I finally survived, thanks to my family and several skilled medical specialists, who patched me up remarkably well.
Since I was accompanied to Brittany by my Macintosh computer, I tried as best I could to manipulate it… but some of my previous Internet skills had been bumped into the backwoods by my accident. Personally, I was totally convinced that my basic technical intelligence—that’s to say, my computer skills—was intact…. which corresponded to official medical evaluations of the patient. Little by little, through playing around with my faithful Macintosh, I was able to confirm, slowly but surely, that most of my former Internet functionality was indeed operational, although there were several technical zones in which I continued to behave a little shakily.
Over the months that followed, right up to and including today, I have been able to use my hardware (including a new iMac and several external disks) to confirm that I know what I’m doing in the Internet domain. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my friendly Mac world has been playing a significant role as a
psychotherapy guide and yardstick. For example, since the accident, I found it impossible to link a powerful external disk to either of my two iMac computers. It was only yesterday that I played around with this external disk long enough to discover that it must have been screwed up a little by contacts with somebody’s PC environment, and that I would have to reformat and reinitialize it. I lost no time in doing so, and everything returned to normal… as it had been before my accident.
The most amazing thing of all is that I am now tackling various aspects of my familiar Macintosh world
in a more rigorous manner than before my fall down the stairs. The therapy challenges have made me an even better Mac user than I used to be.
I'm sure you are not recommending that everyone takes a heavy tumble! Luckily, I am in a single-storey home. Technology is frustrating. Upgrading my modem has meant that I walk my MacbookPro to the printer and plug it in when I want to scan or print... grrr! I used to have a theory that I worked more effectively when hung-over because I only had enough energy to concentrate on what I needed to do and didn't get distracted. Well, that's what I thought, anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnnie:
DeleteAs an Australian, you may have been standing on your head when you read my blog post. At no point did I recommend that a reader might fall on her head in order to test the efficiency of her Macintosh as a therapeutic tool. I was merely saying that, if she has already fallen on her head, for reasons that probably have nothing to do with computers, then the Macintosh might be used as a therapeutic device enabling her to confirm that her brain still functions perfectly. Have I made myself clear? Seriously, I find it more and more difficult to communicate easily with fellow-Australians, who seem to take time in figuring out what I’m trying to say.
A few days ago, I told an Australian female school-friend that I intended to remove from my opening page the description of myself as an Australian expatriate, and refrain from referring to Australia in my blog posts, since I no longer receive much news about what’s happening in my native land. The silly woman replied that she was sorry to learn that I would be abandoning my Antipodes blog. I tried to explain that I was simply abandoning references to Australia. But she was visibly incapable of understanding what I was trying to tell her.
Do you have any idea of why this lack of understanding might have arisen? As far as I know, I still write in clear English. Mystery…
My reasoning mechanisms seem to work better since my accident than before. This is most noticeable in my Macintosh context, where the slightest improvement is immediately visible. But these improvements have a simple explanation, nothing whatsoever to do with the Macintosh. As soon as I recovered my consciousness after the fall down the stairs, I made a spontaneous decision—suddenly and automatically, for unclear reasons—to abandon totally and forever the consumption of alcohol. I developed overnight an extreme aversion towards alcohol. It’s almost certainly that total absence of alcohol in my new life that has made me a better thinker today than before I stopped drinking.
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