Finding Joy in Snarkville

Sometimes doing the grown-up thing isn’t fun or exciting and nearly always isn’t the thing we want to do most in our lives.  If we define childhood by instant gratification, then we ought to define growing up as the tendency to delay gratification longer and longer in light of more rational choices.  So, my theory is that the more we delay the instant, feel good, I want it right now feelings, the more grown up we are.

By this theory, I’ve just aged 10+ years!

So, here’s the deal.  In January, my laptop died.  I mean DEAD.  It does not boot, it doesn’t make noise, there is nothing that comes out of that laptop at all.  Thankfully, I had Time Machine up and running and was able to restore my whole personal life onto my iMac that now does double duty.  This is not an ideal solution, mostly because I spend more hours in my office now than in my family room — but it is working, with only minor complaints.

Now the first question is “why didn’t you run to the nearest Apple store and replace your beloved MacBook Pro?”  Well, have you watched the news lately, there is this recession thing and money is um, tight.  We have been slowly working towards a place where we will not feel the pinch and have been doing ever so good with it.  We’ve lived on a budget, a tight one, for a long time and while I could have just run out and bought the new machine, I felt that the more responsible, the more grown-up thing was to use the perfectly acceptable machine in my office for awhile.

The next question, “So, you have to have a plan, right?”  Well, yes, yes I do.  You see, I did a cash flow analysis (shut up) and saw that we’d be in a better spot for the big purchase in July and that would make a bunch more sense than in January.  See also, July isn’t too far away and I will be able to do this and maybe my feeling and requirements will change.  I’m also looking at a smaller machine, in an effort to be more frugal.

Then it happened.  First, there was a massive hard drive enclosure failure.  The drives themselves did not fail (thankfully), but nearly every photo that we have taken since 2000 was on those drives and when the enclosure failed, I cried.  I feared the worst.  We backed up all we could and began to frantically research solutions with redundancy and back-ups and ways that we’d never have to worry about this again.  In the process, I got this wild hair (well, truly it had bugged me for a very long time and I’d been putting it off for sheer laziness — which truly only make the problem worse) that we needed better organization to said photos.  I dream of having books printed of our photos, of the years of Duke’s life, of us to force our friends to sit through — you know the fun.  So, while Prince researched photo storage, I researched photo organization.  We downloaded and tried out several bits of software — please note, this is a Mac household and since Macs come with iPhoto, it appears very few people are willing to write great photo organization software for the Mac — iPhoto was NOT our solution.  I fretted when my top contender seemed to be too unstable to handle all our photos (numbering at least 10,000, but perhaps as many as twice that — the final tally is still waiting to be counted).  We finally settled on iPhoto’s big brother, Aperture.  While not free (or cheap), it solved most of our problems and worked within the needed framework.

So, last night (as our free trial was ending), we made the pilgramage to the Apple Store to buy copies of Aperture (yes more than one, because we have two people and ultimately 4 computers that will use this program).  While we waited, I took to moment to make sure that my earlier decision to downsize the screen on my future (JULY) laptop was the right one.  And then I did the stupidest thing I could do — I picked up one of those dang iPads.  I was instantly in love. I was instantly thinking of all the things I could with it that I can’t do today. I was thinking how it would make my life perfect and complete and I was ready to run away into the sunset with my new iPad.  But then that rational, adult voice came into my head.

It said:

• The iPad is new, you want to wait until the next generation is out.
• Remember the price drop on the iPhone? You don’t want there to be an upgrade or price drop shortly after you purchase.
• You REALLY need the new laptop, the iPad is a nice to have, but won’t solve your problem.
• Don’t forget, you and Prince don’t share well, so this isn’t a single iPad purchase, but two.
• There’s this recession going on, you really have been working to a noble goal and you are on your way, don’t stop now….

My adult, rational brain SUCKS.

So, we left the shiny Apple store (and I ought to note, in the interest of full disclosure, that they were out of stock and thus I could not have bought one if I wanted to).  We talked it through.  We both tried to marry our adult, rational sides with the “I want it” sides — to this is there is no middle ground.  I have put them into and out of my cart on the Apple site so many times you’d think I was doing the iPad Hokey Pokey.  I decided to sleep on it and see how I felt in the light of the morning.

I dreamed about my new iPad last night.

This morning, I put two iPads in my cart. I put a refurbished laptop in my cart. I fainted at the thought of the price.  I walked away. I told Prince I was going to buy the laptop and *MY* iPad.  I walked away again.  I cleaned up a bit; I did a load of laundry; I checked back on my cart and it was all still there waiting for me — waving at me, saying how much it wanted to come live here with me.

Then I did the hardest thing. I closed the Apple window and I walked away.  I had a plan. It is a good plan.  It is a plan that will meet all my needs when they need to be met and I do not need to be swayed by something shiny.

I want to be proud of myself for doing the adult thing, for delaying the gratification until the time is right, for being responsible; but I’m sad.  I’m sad because I can’t have everything I want when I want it (which is NOW). I’m sad because my plan takes time and waiting is really, really hard. I’m sad because sticking to the plan is not much fun.

So, now I think I’m going to work on organizing some photos.  I’ve made myself a new deal – I can buy the iPad ONLY after every photo is tagged and organized based on our new system.  This will probably take me the better part of the summer — as I’m only at 2600 photos thus far and can only do a few folders a day.  I have a major project and don’t need the iPad to distract me.  (I’m still getting my laptop in July.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 10:31 am and is filed under Mental Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.