Well, This Is New

I suppose I'm a bit of a Luddite. I've always been among the last to embrace any part of the onslaught of technological advances.

Back in the day, my dad gave me a coin to play the Pac-Man arcade in a gas station (wait, did they have those in gas stations?) and I burned through that little chomper’s multiple lives so decisively I can still see the look of shocked amusement on my dad’s face. I was never much for video games after that.

In college in the mid ’90s, the only use I saw for computers was to type and print my papers. I was aware of an “internet,” but I was foggy about the point of it. I remember my brother explaining to me that companies could have a website, and people could look at that website to find out more about them. But why? I thought it was just a geek thing.

In 2001, in an uncharacteristic splurge to celebrate my post-college employment, I bought a cellphone and signed up for a plan. In the practical daylight of the next morning, however, the whole thing felt extravagant and unnecessary. I took it back.

To this day I don’t own a smart phone. Why pay for that kind of coverage when I kind of hate communicating with people anyway? I didn’t own any type of touch-screen device until the last few months, when I was forced to buy a tablet for my new church calling to teach teenagers in Sunday School. (Dang kids and their constant phone use, am I right? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned manual?)

So it should come as no surprise that I waited until approximately 6.5 years after blogs stopped being cool to start one of my own. But I’ve got words in me, and I’ve found recently that life holds a little more luster when I gather them up and plunk them somewhere. So this is where I plan to put them. You can watch if you’d like.