My laptop broke. I’m canceling my farewell to Medium. And…

Well, it was never a goodbye in the first place. I only said ‘bye’. When I was learning English three decades ago — as a teenager in Moscow — we were taught that ‘goodbye’ means ‘farewell’. Is that correct? I’ve always assumed so, but now I find myself questioning my knowledge as I write this.

So my laptop broke a couple of days ago. It’s served me well for several years. I loved my MacBook Air and had no issues with it until this happened to the screen:

I think my youngest son might have stepped on my laptop, though he won’t admit it, and there are no cracks. Anyway, it’s my fault — the computer was lying on the floor when it got damaged.

It immediately reminded me how lost I felt without my computer. I couldn’t immediately get a new one because money’s very tight. My work immediately suffered. My boss tried to help by lending me an old spare laptop he had lying around — some old Asus. I appreciated the gesture, but that Asus was glitchy, slow, and just a piece of shit.

After a couple of days, I was finally able to make some arrangements and am now typing this on my new MacBook Air. It’s a real pleasure, but this story isn’t about promoting Apple’s products.

One of the unexpected discomforts during those two days was not being able to write…