The card in my office mailbox announced a sale – a 13” MacBook for $777 – to celebrate the reopening of the Digital Duck in its renovated space. Since that same laptop was close to $1500 a year ago when I bought my IMac, I took the bait and plunked down my dough.
Then buyer’s remorse set in. “I don’t need a laptop computer. I have my PC at work and my IMac at home. I don’t need a laptop, so why did I buy it?”
A friend who’s a computer whiz came to help me install the necessary software. When I expressed regret that I had bought something I don’t need, she said that since I hadn’t opened the box, I could return it. I paused. For some reason I didn’t want to take it back. So I replied, “Oh well, if it turns out that I don’t use it, I’ll give it to one of my granddaughters. They’ll be going to college soon.”
I put the laptop in the bedroom and started using it for my morning journaling. It was kind of cool to be able to sit in bed and record my morning reflections, but that was certainly no excuse for buying it.
Meanwhile, I was feeling frustrated with progress on a museum proposal for my Pilgrimage exhibition. I’d stalled because I needed to submit 20 images of my work on a CD and wasn’t sure how to do it. With a nudge from a friend, I stopped procrastinating, selected the images and created 20 files. Then it hit me: no one will bother to open 20 separate files. I need a slide show.
I had never created a slide show. I checked with various friends whom I consider to be proficient on computer stuff. It became clear that to have something that could be opened on either a Mac or PC and would allow viewers to progress through the images at their own pace, I needed to create it in PowerPoint. I had never used PowerPoint. Panic. Pause. Stall.
Cut to me journaling in bed one Sunday morning. On a whim I start fooling with the laptop. I try out Pages for a while and think, “Why not open PowerPoint and have a peek?” Click. "Yuk! I hate templates. Oh well, here goes." I fiddle with a template that shows promise and sort of like it. I see a button for inserting a slide. Click. The slide template allows me to import a photo, so I bring in a scan of one of my paintings. "That was pretty easy!" I start playing around with how I want each page to look. Suddenly I discover I can turn off the background graphics, yeah! Then I find a whole passel of different frames for the image, way cool.
"Oh my God, I can do this!"
I save the file to my thumb drive so I can open it on the IMac where all 20 of my image files are stored. I run downstairs and in a couple of hours, the slide show is done. I am floating on the ceiling with excitement. I, LiDoña, a complete jerk with computers and software, have created a professional-looking slideshow, saved it as a PDF, and burned it on a CD. Totally remarkable!
In the days that follow I begin using functions in Word that I have previously ignored. Somehow by playing on the laptop, I have broken through a barrier. I have used all previous desktop computers as work tools and since not knowing how to do something frustrated my work objectives, I would freeze and call for help. For years, I’ve watched people fool around with one button after another until they figured out my issue. But not me - I might lose some of the precious work I’d completed!
Now I understand that I really do need my MacBook. I need it so I can play.
