Today was one of those days I kept feeling like I wanted to punch someone. Not in a violent actually hurt another human being kind of way, but just in a frustration at the world of verification codes, pins, and password changes. I understand when the payment portal for my company asks me to change my log in every three months it’s to protect me, but what they don’t understand is I forgot to write down the last password change three months ago, and I have been relying on auto fill. So when they ask me for my current password, to me it’s all just a row of dots and so I have to go through the whole rigamarole to have the password verified to then change it. The verification involves identifying the fire hydrants (is that a piece in the square or is it borderline?) as well as getting a text to my phone. I feel like Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Fleet by the time I have a new password (which this time I wrote down…) but the geriatric version of me that has been on hold with the IT person (I eventually had to call) has been to the bathroom twice and eaten a whole half bar of dark chocolate.
Technological despair is real my friends, as is the state of the mini temper tantrum over how we are constantly subject to passwords, codes and one touch verification. When I have a day that I know is going to involve the depths of a lot of administrative logging in, I understand anyone around me will hear “Are you kidding me?” and “What the fuck?” alternated with deep breathing. While I may seem like a caged tiger one should not poke, this exhaling of frustration actually makes me safer and less snippy. Even when I fake a smile, looking like Chucky the Doll, on the phone with the insurance rep who I have had to go through six voice prompts to get to (after being routed to roof claims somehow), I can be moderately civil because of the amount of times I have asked the world in general out loud, “Why the fuck?”
Then I move on to the unpleasant task of signing my daughter up for a class on BYU which means I need a gmail account for her that I can actually access, as well as a Net ID account on the teaching portal. Both needing passwords. This scenario is the reason many passwords in my life are help me Jesus and Fuck you passwords. One of my favorite passwords is I hate this shit. They must have caught on to a lot of other people venting through passwords as they now require you to have a special character and a number. It takes away the fun and the power of Screwyouseriously when you have to add a 34%.
Do I actually think there is someone who loves this stuff? Okay, maybe love is a strong word, but I think there are people who get jazzed by the connectivity of technology and how it all works. I wish they would be my best friend and time portal to my house and do any kind of log in and password change so I can go do pilates in the park or get real chocolate because buying the dark shit was just me thinking I could fool myself into being healthy. The one time I built a funnel for my business to hold a webinar, I had such a slick sheen of face grease for a week from code and verification stress, I had to do three kelp face masks just to get back to normal, and twitched at email dings for a solid straight week.
This is not how I function. I am a highly sensitive greatly intuitive human being. I don’t like being on the laptop more than reading, Zooming and writing. Any other stuff like editing on iMovie or having to open multiple screens is really overwhelming because I have a lap top screen that is the size of the bottom of a milk container. My kids think I have way too many tabs open, but I think I have no tabs open so I am not sure what is happening there. Another problem is my brain thinks a lot faster than many people and I then use technology in a similar speed so if I don’t get an answer to something within 30 seconds, like “we were just talking, where did they go?” I start to send screen shots with Can U See This? The idea that we may need to carry over some kind of incomplete communication via technology into the next day literally makes my nervous system overload and is probably the reason why I spent so much of 2022 watching Grey’s Anatomy.
The WORST is when you have spent three hours trying to solve a technology problem with a log in or some kind of verification and that person has to leave and promises they will make notes on the case and that someone else will come on and finish the job and you KNOW no notes have been adequately made and you will have to start the process once again. These are the circumstances where I have learned to walk away and maybe decide I will never log into that portal again and not having a phone or internet for a while may not be a bad idea. I am too stressed for this shit.
I don’t know about you, but I have a document list that is fourteen pages long of passwords and log ins. I know there are apps and password carts and vaults out there, but they just don’t seem to be what I need. I may never log into the web site for swim class again for my kids, but then one day one of them may decide they want to take a diving class and I need the log in and I can’t find it, and it is telling me I need to enter the old log in to make a new one. So I try and create a whole new account, but I did that already five other times over the last five years, and I am out of email addresses and the system is on to me and I just want to crawl up in a ball with some soft soothing jazz and mumble.
Yes, this is our world and there is nothing we can do about it no matter how much we wish we could go back to the mediocrity of the cassette tape and the pay phone. It’s over people, and while some folks think a chip in our head is the road to being controlled by some kind of fascist society, if it means I don’t need to change a password again… sign me up.
Shameless plug:
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Yes, technology rules our society and lives now, mandating many things we need to do to access and maintain personal information while it gathers data about our preferences so that it can be more efficient next time we visit. Do you feel like you are being tracked through cyberspace?
Oh this is good... and SO true 🤣🤣