My phone, a hardy Samsung Galaxy S7, has been through some rough times and got old. The battery life was measured in minutes, not hours. I could not find a case that didn’t lift the protective screen up enough to turn it into a touch-insensitive surface. The screen protector itself had taken several blows and has become more mosaic that clear screen. It would overheat easily. It was time for a new phone.
I did not realize the Pixel 7 was technically released only a few weeks ago, making this the first time I can recall where I had brand new technology at any level. I have never owned a brand new computer, a brand new model of car, or anything, really. I probably would not have chosen the Pixel over a newer Samsung model had I realized how new this phone was. I did not do my due diligence and went with my gut, which my gut should tell me is bad move. If I can trust my gut, that is.
As frustrating as my old phone was, I at least had trained myself to use it. Where to put my thumb to unlock the thing. How to scan for my open apps and close them. How to go back a screen. These things just worked from muscle memory and none of them seem to work in the Pixel 7. I understand that I’m using a different version of Android. I jumped from Android 8 with Samsung Experience 9 to Android 13. There is no back button. There is no menu button. There are gestures and tapping the back of the phone, which is kind of cool, but I don’t know what I’ll use that for right now. It’s currently set to showing the open apps, which on my old phone the menu button did for me.
It’s not the changes to the UI, but my impatience at learning them. I have come to expect everything is instantly understandable, which is pernicious bullshit that I keep telling myself. Some parts of the transfer went smoothly, others did not. Even to write this blog post I had to log into my hosting service with two factor authentication and in this particular case I use Google Authenticator which does not transfer data over like some of the other apps did. I had to haul out my old phone and do some magic QR shit I don’t understand. Fortunately I haven’t gotten rid of my old phone or who knows what kind of hell I’d have to go through to get into my own website.
I’m not complaining about the phone itself, although I found it didn’t take to the charging cable at first and the camera bar in the back means it slides off of surfaces, including the wireless charger. No, the point here to complain about myself. The new phone unveiled my own impatience. My music did not transfer and there is no card slot on the Pixel that I’ve been able to find, so I have to figure out how to do a Bluetooth transfer or sequentially hook up both phones to a computer and do a lot of copying. These things are not impossible, at least they shouldn’t be, but they aren’t as easy as I want them to be and that’s frankly stupid of me to expect it to be.
I know how difficult it is to create a computer. There is a great project called nand2tetris that allows you to learn, step by step, how computers actually do what they do. I managed to finish all but the last week of the project, which was to create a small operating system (I think that’s what it was, it’s been a while). It was not an easy task as it was. It is a great project though, a virtual way to work through the stuff Ben Eater does on his YouTube channel. None of this is easy. I’m typing this out on a mechanical keyboard communicating through a USB connection to an old Samsung flip 7 whose hard drive went all wahooni shaped and a local guy put in an SSD with Linux Mint on it. Lots of very clever people have solved lots of small problems to make all this happen. And of course all the people who figured out how to make computers talk to each other and hyperlink text and device protocols for all of this communication.
It’s complex and I doubt any single person understands how it all works.
I get frustrated by having to read instruction manuals. I get frustrated by having to search Duck Duck Go for answers. I want to understand it immediately. It’s an unhealthy obsession with knowing that’s holding me back. It’s not wanting to admit I don’t know something, which frankly I do all the time in other fields. I don’t mean sports or boy bands or stuff I genuinely don’t care about; I mean stuff I do for work. Hey Josh, can you split the end of year finish up by the segmentation changes? I have no idea; I haven’t tried it yet. That’s a healthy attitude.
Why is my phone a different sort of thing? Familiarity, probably. I work with it every day. I no longer have to keep a book on my person at all times because I have ebooks on my phone. I can buy them with a click (or at least I can on my old phone. My new phone’s Kindle App refuses to let me purchase things, but my old phone still does). It’s always around for information and entertainment. It should have my music for the rare occasions I want to listen to any[1]I’m one of those people who cannot listen to music or podcasts while at work. Too much verbal processing goes into my job.. It should not be difficult to figure out how to move the files over. Because so many creative people have been poking at the issue, it should be easy.
Easy is not the same as intuitive.
Impatience is no excuse not to do it.
I think, as I write[2]A habit I’m trying to get back into for NaNoWriMo., there is a deeper cause of the frustration. I find myself at work and in real life moving from interruption to interruption, and I don’t like being interrupted from anything I’m doing, but it is the only way, it seems, that things get done. Is it because I don’t schedule my time as well as I should? I’ve never done that before. Is it because I want to let myself get sucked into one thing and really dive in? Probably. I would like to fall into the fugue of focus and get stuff done. Even in writing this up I have checked three websites for links as I type and read a text message thread. I am sure I will be interrupted for this to let the family know what I want for dinner, although my family is pretty good about remembering what everyone ate when and where and so I can get away with “the usual” and not run into trouble. I mean to say, they can all do it, I cannot.
Because of the interruption method of working/not-working, I have lots of things stuck in the middle. Papercraft upstairs I should finish before Halloween, a draft of a story I need to finish by Tuesday for my critique group reading, two drafts of stories that have come to me by playing with The Story Engine, posters to hang, comics to read, books to read, reviews to draft … it goes on and on and on. Half finish or barely started because I do not have the scheduled time to focus on things.
The fault is absolutely mine. I was once in the habit of waking up at 6am to get my writing done before I had shower and breakfast. I need to regain that time slot. I need to give myself permission to use that time slot.
Okay, I’ve wandered a bit through this, but I think the problem I’m trying to solve is interruptions make me think I don’t have time to get things done, and everything gets interrupted so nothing gets done, or at least nothing feels done. I have a system at work that should let me know when a task is absolutely complete because when people ask me about it I impatiently think I need to have the answer right now but I can’t honestly remember (and because it’s usually a chat-based interruption so whatever thoughts I had are now broken) and I have to look it up.
One solution is to schedule my time, force myself to use an hour on a problem and at least I know I will have made some progress, because being interrupted makes me lose the very conception of progress.
The other problem I have to solve is the stupid idea I have that I should know everything instantly. Ask me anything I should, John Doe-like, give you an accurate immediate response.
I’ll have to work on that later. It’s time to tell the family what I want for dinner.