"And here I wander aimlessly...:

I'm not making a value judgment on this at the moment. Good, bad, indifferent, I'm not going to try to determine. I'm just honestly stating a fact.

I feel lost without my computer. It's been over a month now since it broke. You would think I would adjust, that it wouldn't bother me as much after a while. Not so. Not remotely so.

I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong, there's something missing. I'm having to relearn how to live my life. I had a routine going, and it's been severely disrupted. It can be equated to how I might feel if I had to relocate to our garage for whatever reason. Our garage is not connected to our house. Nor is it insulated or temperature controlled. And it doesn't have a bathroom. If my main living space was out there, the way I live every day would change. I'd have to come into the house to use the bathroom, bathe, cook, see or speak to my family, do laundry; it would be much different from the way I live now. Although not having my computer isn't exactly like living out in the garage, I feel just as much upheaval as a result of its absence.

It's not just about the Internet. Although it is nice to have my own portable device which I can use to jump on the web whenever I please, my computer has always been much more than a link to the Internet. I've had access to the Internet. I even had it at my grandma's for the first time over the holiday break. And I can now Twitter on my phone. So I am not remotely disconnected from the world, which is how I would feel if I was just lacking the Internet. Disconnected, not lost.

My computer is what I use to work, to write. And the semester just started, so the papers are going to be coming soon. It's probably just me, a mental block that has been created, but I think better when I'm using my computer. Every time I'm working on a different machine, my focus seems to fly out the window. I have enough trouble focusing as it is, so I really don't need anything else hampering my concentration.

More than that, though, my computer is my connection to music. To MY music, my 5,000+ song, 15+ day, iTunes library. If I had to use my computer for only one thing, it would become a glorified mp3 player. That's what my first computer, a desktop, was for a long time. We didn't have access to the Internet at the time, and I wasn't doing much word processing, so it was on night and day simply to play my music. And I had terrible speakers at the time, which barely allowed me to hear anything, but despite the low volume, I still had to have the music playing. I just had to stay close and listen intently. Which I did. I stayed in my bedroom all day, virtually chained to my computer just so I could fill up as many moments as I could with music. And anytime I spent a prolonged period in another part of the house, I would find myself wishing that I was back in my bedroom, making my way from the beginning of my large library to the end. Unless, of course, I happened to be able to listen to music in whatever room I was in, which did happen on pretty regular occasions.

Thus, barring the Internet and getting my homework done and the various other things my computer is useful for, that in and of itself, the absence of my music, is enough to make me feel lost. If I can say this at all without sounding like I'm dramatizing the situation, because that's not my intention, I really do start to feel like there's something wrong when I go just a few hours without music. I honestly do start to wander around, trying to figure out what I'm doing. I tend to do that to a degree even with music playing continually, but at least I feel much less aimless when it does happen.

I hope my dear laptop is whole and properly functioning again soon. I miss my life.