Reorganizing Priorities

It's really quite fascinating how much one's life revolves around computers, and even more fascinating what a lack of internet connection can do to someone. By someone I mean me. Ever since the laptop suddenly called it quits last Thursday; I've been whining on and on about it, not necessarily as much as I had hoped for; but what surprised me the most was my ignorance on the night of the disaster, and the events (sorry, emotions) that preceded thereafter the very next day. It's odd that I would have been so accepting of the event when the laptop just didn't want to boot, sure there were things that went through my head like "how am I going to do my summaries now?" or "how am I going to complete my video assignment?", and although the solution is clear: that I use the computer outside, it was the start of something that I had not expected; something I'd like to call the privacy barrier, or lack thereof. I had not noticed as much before, but my laptop was all I had as my internet gateway. It was my private connection with my online persona, and it had gone. It's interesting how one can suddenly feel a void, a gaping hole in one's timetable; an amount of time suddenly freed that just left me lost. It's not as serious as I make it seem, but as usual, I like the drama of it all. The point is, it's really the reason a personal computer is called personal is that it does get personal. At the beginning, I felt that this was a good opportunity to not go crazy, but actually live life like everyone else; and to spend more time on social activities instead of wondering how well vista would suit the big picture. So it seemed. I ended up reverting to my old habits (they die hard, with a vengeance) and not only did I feel that it wasn't private anymore, it wasn't comfortable at all. In a way it has opened my eyes to new horizons on psychoanalyzing myself in understanding the cause and effect of the sudden loss of personal, or private space. The guinea pig being myself, it was easy to see that I obviously did the human thing and started colonizing the computer outside, the very one I'm typing on. It started with simple personalization and moved on to settings and ultimately getting comfortable with the UI. This is where the problem begins. I am not the only user on this system, and this leads to security issues, being the very insecure paranoid user that I am. Either way, it's been a good three days on this computer, and even though I am getting more comfortable with it; it still seems all the rather public. I suppose it's all a sort of training and good realization that things can just escape us without warning, and it is not how fast we adapt that makes or breaks us, but how often.