Digital Anxiety

Forget the global pandemic. That I can manage through personal choices to vaccinate and wear a mask in confined spaces with strangers. No, fears of contracting a novel coronavirus pale in comparison to my constant anticipation of some failure of my desktop computer, my laptop, my phone, wi-fi, social media platforms, and everything else electronic. Recent experiences have only heightened the tension in my brain and body.

At the end of the 2021, my old (admittedly too old) desktop began to display a blue screen at start-up. The local computer fix-it shop determined it was a compatability issue between the ancient processor and the desire for Windows 10 to update properly. Do not tell me to get a Macintosh. I am too committed to Microsoft, and while it is arguably not that intuitive, there is remains a mild degree of comfort and familiarity as I, myself, continue to age.

Even after the tech folks diagnosed the problem(s?) and did the best they could to fix them, I still got a blue screen a few days later. They strongly suggested I purchase a new desktop, and so I did, last month. I ended up with the "house brand" from Micro Center, got talked into their supplementary security software, and off I went. I did manage to upgrade to Windows 11, so I feel set for awhile, but still dreading some pop-up window that I don't understand, or am leery of accommodating.

I transferred some files to my documents and pictures, but soon filled up the One Drive that was syncing with the PC. I had forgotten that abomination of "The Cloud" that Microsoft insists you subscribe to, demanding you to pay for extra storage. I thought I had managed to unlink, and then uninstall, One Drive, but yesterday I created a new Word document that I accidentally saved to One Drive instead of my desktop, so could not immediately locate after closing it. Now it is saved to "My PC" with a slightly different file name.

The laptop seems to be doing ok, but it is refurbished and I already know it will not be compatible with Windows 11. I am not good about backing things up regularly, and when I do, I end up scattering things in different external hard drives and flash drives. I no longer re-use SD cards from my camera, in case every hard drive fails. That is how paranoid I have become.

I was dragged kicking and screaming into buying a smart phone because the last time I tried to add minutes through my pay-as-you-go carrier, the service disallowed the transaction. My basic, reliable flip phone was at last obsolete, incompatible with 5G or whatever. I had to have my spouse set up the beast, which is an android. She has an iPhone, so she was a bit frustrated, too. I remain steadfast in having as few apps as possible, and I still managed to fill up my phone with only a handful of pictures. Nobody told me that I need a micro SD card for more storage.

Having enrolled in a self-paced wildlife conservation photography course, I learned that Instagram is a good place to showcase your best images. Consequently, I resurrected my dormant Instagram account, and started posting. I was initially getting prompts that Insta was not recognizing me, so I had to change passwords several times before agreeing to have a two-step authentication process that included my phone. I was doing Instagram through my laptop, and progressing ok, with a whopping fourteen posts. Then, when I logged in a couple days later, I got a message that Instagram had permanently disabled my account for a "violation of community standards," and I had no way to appeal. I can guarantee that I committed no violation, unless posting a photo of the cover of my book Wasps: The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect was somehow copyright infringement. I have no plans to try making a new Instagram account. I'll continue relying on Flickr as a way to attract the attention of publishers. Pity, though, as there are some friends I can follow only on Instagram. I do hope they will forgive me.

My overriding existential fear, naturally, is that my voice will become increasingly irrelevant as the next generation of digital technologies leaves me ever farther behind. No Tik-tok for me. I have a few things on my "Bug Eric" Youtube channel, but that is about it. I have been posting all my edited images to iNaturalist, but am terribly behind in uploading to Flickr. Both are my way of saving things to "the cloud," but only Flickr lets me save images at their highest resolution. I may need to find additional solutions.

Too much screen time, too little exercise here in the winter months, and the trepidation I feel every time I push a power button, is taking its toll. It is highly tempting to return to pen, paper, and typewriter, but that would be self-inflicted irrelevance. I feel compelled to keep my social media friends entertained and informed, but get less and less satisfaction from Facebook and Twitter all the time. In-person interactions are not only problematic from the standpoint of the pandemic, but unappealing given the highly religious and conservative community I now find myself living in.

How do you cope? What comforts, and cures for anxiety and frustration am I unaware of? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you.