My most stressful day so far – and all because of technology. It sits completely and firmly in my blind spot. When people talk tech, I hear a foreign language at best, but sometimes, the words just disappear altogether into a fuzz of noise. I am listening, I am focused, but something happens and I know not what. I may know and understand the individual words, but I cannot compute [ha!] the sentence.
Equally, when using technological devices, I don’t (can’t?) read the screen as others seem to be able to. Again, I can see the screen, and understand individual aspects, but the wholesale comprehension and freestyling navigation of its functions eludes me.
This week, we had our first website building workshop. Building a website. Me. This was going to be interesting.
After parking the car a couple of times (yes, a couple - I was in such a flap at the thought of my Achilles' heel being exposed) I walked through the door in ‘heightened alert mode’ and nervously got through the workshop. I came away equipped with valuable information, notes, PowerPoint and handout references, and reassurance that help was at hand. All good.
Now I’m sat at home staring blankly at a web-building site in a cold sweat, desperately wanting everything to make sense. Mockingly, the only words jumping out from the introductory blurb are ’easy’ ‘simple’ and ‘quick’.
The term technophobe doesn’t fit me, it's an easily accessible word that I do use in the absence of anything else. But I do not fear, nor dislike technology. I simply have a block; a wall I struggle to break down. I can work out or be shown a process, understand it and apply it, but then it disappears in the blink of an eye. What takes someone else twenty minutes to do, I take all afternoon - and then some.
I can do this, with help and guidance, but far from being ‘easy’, ‘simple’ or ‘quick’, for me this process will be difficult, complex and very slow.