Just One Thumb
Streetlight (Street Talk)
by gayla m. mills
I’ve been using an old refurbished desktop, just a couple hundred bucks. It’s okay—except for its geriatric pace and annoying habit of turning itself back on after shut down. Then I started getting threatening messages from Microsoft reminding me it can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 and will become even less capable and more vulnerable. Its days are numbered.
My new Dell arrived last week and I began prepping for the switch. Since I didn’t want my files in the cloud (I’m under the illusion that I have some privacy left), I needed to back them up onto a flash drive first. This time around, though, my sync program warned me with bold red text and exclamation marks that it couldn’t cram any more data onto the drive that had worked so well before.
In desperation, I decided to finally delete things I no longer needed. I began by reviewing my photo folder and trashing over 1,600 images. Yay! Yet for some absurd reason, this failed to create a lick of fresh space to finish the sync from my gasping desktop.
My spirits were lifted two days later by an Amazon package with a fresh 512 GB thumb drive. Now I could cull and organize all my files with plenty of room left for the future. Having finished the photos and music, I moved on to my video and doc folders. I discovered a lot of junk I didn’t need: lists of things I could give up on (to read/watch/create/learn), random PDFs and manuals to things I no longer owned, and stuff I no longer cared about.
I also stumbled on the gems. Forgotten letters I’d written or received, audio files of our dogs talking to us at breakfast, responses I’d crafted to get the tax man or HVAC guy off my back, clips of music jams with friends, and thousands of drafts and research files for my essays and book. So many people I’ve known, houses I’ve fixed up and enjoyed, projects I’ve tackled, and jobs I worked hard to get, and then stress over.
And the dogs, oh my goodness. The six we’d adopted and raised, four now buried on Cedar Hill. The ones we’d fostered from the SPCA or dog sat while traveling in New Zealand and Ireland. The videos of Riley and Zoey just one week after we found them separately but brought them home together. They couldn’t stop chasing and playing, tongues flying, with Riley chewing on Zoey’s back leg to get her attention when she flagged. They were so in love and so happy just being together. I could say the same about Gene and me. So many random pictures and video clips, with bits of chaos or beauty captured inadvertently in the rooms we’ve shared. So many letters and songs. So many smiles casually thrown about.
I’d forgotten how cute the nieces and nephews were, the little ones perched in a canoe or thrown over a shoulder. Most are married now, some with kids of their own. My friends and I were once surprisingly young, with unblemished skin and shiny hair and unthinking vigor. And I kept running into ghosts—friends or acquaintances taken down prematurely, and all my parents’ and grandparents’ generations gone. But there they were on my screen, alive again for the moment I paused before opening the next file.
How should I think of this unintended review of my life and of the lives of those I’d known? What about the lecture notes and PowerPoint lessons I created (made obsolete by AI), the video of the writing center I developed (now a computer lab), the faces of the students I mentored and taught (now navigating the real world). Essays published, music videos made, flowers arranged, trees planted. A vast array of moments I savored. Yet I also felt brushed by sadness, knowing how much has disappeared and how much will be gone soon enough.
I look down at this little drive in my palm. My life is held on a device the size of the second digit of my pinky. I close my hand tightly around it, feeling its fragile heft. Its days are numbered too.
Next
My new Dell arrived last week and I began prepping for the switch. Since I didn’t want my files in the cloud (I’m under the illusion that I have some privacy left), I needed to back them up onto a flash drive first. This time around, though, my sync program warned me with bold red text and exclamation marks that it couldn’t cram any more data onto the drive that had worked so well before.
In desperation, I decided to finally delete things I no longer needed. I began by reviewing my photo folder and trashing over 1,600 images. Yay! Yet for some absurd reason, this failed to create a lick of fresh space to finish the sync from my gasping desktop.
My spirits were lifted two days later by an Amazon package with a fresh 512 GB thumb drive. Now I could cull and organize all my files with plenty of room left for the future. Having finished the photos and music, I moved on to my video and doc folders. I discovered a lot of junk I didn’t need: lists of things I could give up on (to read/watch/create/learn), random PDFs and manuals to things I no longer owned, and stuff I no longer cared about.
I also stumbled on the gems. Forgotten letters I’d written or received, audio files of our dogs talking to us at breakfast, responses I’d crafted to get the tax man or HVAC guy off my back, clips of music jams with friends, and thousands of drafts and research files for my essays and book. So many people I’ve known, houses I’ve fixed up and enjoyed, projects I’ve tackled, and jobs I worked hard to get, and then stress over.
And the dogs, oh my goodness. The six we’d adopted and raised, four now buried on Cedar Hill. The ones we’d fostered from the SPCA or dog sat while traveling in New Zealand and Ireland. The videos of Riley and Zoey just one week after we found them separately but brought them home together. They couldn’t stop chasing and playing, tongues flying, with Riley chewing on Zoey’s back leg to get her attention when she flagged. They were so in love and so happy just being together. I could say the same about Gene and me. So many random pictures and video clips, with bits of chaos or beauty captured inadvertently in the rooms we’ve shared. So many letters and songs. So many smiles casually thrown about.
I’d forgotten how cute the nieces and nephews were, the little ones perched in a canoe or thrown over a shoulder. Most are married now, some with kids of their own. My friends and I were once surprisingly young, with unblemished skin and shiny hair and unthinking vigor. And I kept running into ghosts—friends or acquaintances taken down prematurely, and all my parents’ and grandparents’ generations gone. But there they were on my screen, alive again for the moment I paused before opening the next file.
How should I think of this unintended review of my life and of the lives of those I’d known? What about the lecture notes and PowerPoint lessons I created (made obsolete by AI), the video of the writing center I developed (now a computer lab), the faces of the students I mentored and taught (now navigating the real world). Essays published, music videos made, flowers arranged, trees planted. A vast array of moments I savored. Yet I also felt brushed by sadness, knowing how much has disappeared and how much will be gone soon enough.
I look down at this little drive in my palm. My life is held on a device the size of the second digit of my pinky. I close my hand tightly around it, feeling its fragile heft. Its days are numbered too.
Next