Gratitude Challenge Day 19: I am grateful for the Internet. Don’t laugh at my addiction. I remember the first time I heard that screechy dial-up sound when my cousin’s computer connected to the Internet so my mom and I could send an email to Russia to my brother who was living over there.
It was very expensive to send mail to him and if you sent a care package, (even more expensive) you were almost guaranteed that he would not get it as you sent it. So we tried email. Oh my! I typed in my pre-written letter and a few days later he was able to get to a computer at the university where he was studying and send a reply.
I was forever more hooked on the Internet. And look at us now. I know it has changed our lives in both positive and negative ways and I won’t bore you with my views but I will bore you with one more story.
When the movie, The Internship, came out my husband and I went because it was about two not-so-clever dudes getting an internship at Google. Everything was going along fine until the scene where the not-so-clever dudes show up at the Googleplex in Mountain View California. I have been to Mountain View, so I was looking for landmarks I might know until the Googleplex showed up and then out of nowhere, I burst into tears. I couldn’t stop sobbing for the longest time. My long-suffering sweet husband looked over at me in shock.
What I was finally able to tell him, something I didn’t even know myself until that moment, was that I was distraught and sad because I realized that I would never work for Google - my time had passed. I think about how I love technology even though it makes me want to pull my hair out, working for Google was the face ofwhat I thought might still be ahead of me and the tears were shed because I couldn't even believe my fantasy anymore.
Anyway, I guess I will have to remain satisfied to be a techie wanna-be. I am still grateful for the Internet making the world smaller. It is a wonderful and dangerous thing and I am so grateful that I was around when it was invented.
Hugs,
Diana