Moving has changed from 10 years ago. Compared to 30 years ago, it’s monumentally changed. It’s not something you think about until you go through it.
The accumulation of “stuff” and “things” brings this home, as does the electronic interconnectivity of our world. The latter is particularly telling when you look back at what you “needed” when you moved out of your parents’ house and into a dorm room, or from your apartment as a college senior to the location of your first job.
You had fewer possessions as a single person. Add marriage and kids, and you get more furniture and knick knacks to drag along. That’s a given.
What you’re not prepared for (or perhaps you just don’t think about this beforehand) is all the wires, connections and electronic devices that must be taken apart, and resecured in your new home. My wife may have thought of all these things before our recent move, but I didn’t really, and it’s mind-boggling how much she has had to do.
First, of course, you take everything apart in the old house. Second, you put them all together again in the new home. That’s the simple, conceptual view of this situation.
The more complex and realistic view means your phone, internet and television don’t work after you’ve hooked everything up in the new cave. You do everything by the book (as my wife did) and you get no cable signal and the phone is dead.
This precipitates multiple calls to service personnel. You must build this into your emotional mindset when you move or you go insane.
In the old days, this never happened. Rather than a key fob to reprogram, you had keys. Remember them?
Instead of laptops, desktop computers and iPads, you had a typewriter. It might have even been an electric typewriter. Whooopeeee! It had a plug, but no other wires to contend with.
Your television set received reception through an antenna. You climbed on the roof to install it. If you wanted fuzzier pictures, you left the antenna on top of the TV and just fiddled with it whenever the reception got poor.
Keys, typewriters, antennas = easy. Keyfobs and keypads, laptops and desktops and cable = hard.
As equipment is added to a product, complexity multiplies. That’s why we get so frustrated with installing and programming the devices that deliver information to us today.
You don’t just plug a smartphone in, and whammo, it’s ready to go. There are apps to download, instructions to read (egads), passwords and logins to construct. We program ourselves to understand how to do this, and with practice you get good at it.
Multiply the smartphone activity to include your desktop, cable (TV) and keyfob (for your car to get in the gate or open the garage door). With prayer, all of these connections may operate superbly if you are fortunate enough to plug the right coil into the proper receptacle. Make a bad decision and forget about the next two days of your life. They’re gone as you get on the phone to try and reach a service person, actually speak with a human, and actually find the person who can resolve your problem.
Then, set up a time for them to send the guy over to fix it. Pray again that the guy actually knows what he is doing and can get your system working. Test it before he leaves because it still might not work the next morning when you try it alone.
Several days later you sit in your disaster, comfortably phoning, texting, watching TV, opening the garage, but wondering where the heck the peanuts got put away after unpacking.
The accumulation of “stuff” and “things” brings this home, as does the electronic interconnectivity of our world. The latter is particularly telling when you look back at what you “needed” when you moved out of your parents’ house and into a dorm room, or from your apartment as a college senior to the location of your first job.
You had fewer possessions as a single person. Add marriage and kids, and you get more furniture and knick knacks to drag along. That’s a given.
What you’re not prepared for (or perhaps you just don’t think about this beforehand) is all the wires, connections and electronic devices that must be taken apart, and resecured in your new home. My wife may have thought of all these things before our recent move, but I didn’t really, and it’s mind-boggling how much she has had to do.
First, of course, you take everything apart in the old house. Second, you put them all together again in the new home. That’s the simple, conceptual view of this situation.
The more complex and realistic view means your phone, internet and television don’t work after you’ve hooked everything up in the new cave. You do everything by the book (as my wife did) and you get no cable signal and the phone is dead.
This precipitates multiple calls to service personnel. You must build this into your emotional mindset when you move or you go insane.
In the old days, this never happened. Rather than a key fob to reprogram, you had keys. Remember them?
Instead of laptops, desktop computers and iPads, you had a typewriter. It might have even been an electric typewriter. Whooopeeee! It had a plug, but no other wires to contend with.
Your television set received reception through an antenna. You climbed on the roof to install it. If you wanted fuzzier pictures, you left the antenna on top of the TV and just fiddled with it whenever the reception got poor.
Keys, typewriters, antennas = easy. Keyfobs and keypads, laptops and desktops and cable = hard.
As equipment is added to a product, complexity multiplies. That’s why we get so frustrated with installing and programming the devices that deliver information to us today.
You don’t just plug a smartphone in, and whammo, it’s ready to go. There are apps to download, instructions to read (egads), passwords and logins to construct. We program ourselves to understand how to do this, and with practice you get good at it.
Multiply the smartphone activity to include your desktop, cable (TV) and keyfob (for your car to get in the gate or open the garage door). With prayer, all of these connections may operate superbly if you are fortunate enough to plug the right coil into the proper receptacle. Make a bad decision and forget about the next two days of your life. They’re gone as you get on the phone to try and reach a service person, actually speak with a human, and actually find the person who can resolve your problem.
Then, set up a time for them to send the guy over to fix it. Pray again that the guy actually knows what he is doing and can get your system working. Test it before he leaves because it still might not work the next morning when you try it alone.
Several days later you sit in your disaster, comfortably phoning, texting, watching TV, opening the garage, but wondering where the heck the peanuts got put away after unpacking.