My love/hate relationship with technology

I just spent a frustrating half hour on my computer. I was trying to figure out how to import my blog as notes on my Facebook site. For some weird, nebulous reason the application decided not to recognize the URL of my blog. I tried it on 3 different web browsers. I tried it from 2 different links and typed it in a dozen times. I checked to make sure the DSL cable hadn't gotten knocked loose. I checked all my settings. Finally, on about the 12th try, it took. I still don't know what I did - or didn't - do that made it work.

I have always had this love/hate relationship with all my technology. I hate the learning curve. I love the benefits. My husband, who can cobble together his own platform from discarded computer parts that seem to follow him home, does not have this problem. He seems to intuitively know what to try. Oh, that didn't work? Try this. Not that either? Ok, just go here. It's like he's the computer whisperer or something. I usually learn all the basic functions of my technology, but skip the special features. I use my cell phone to make and receive calls. I don't retrieve voicemail messages, use the phone number index, play the games, or use it as an alarm clock. I know I could learn, but that would mean sitting down and reading the instruction manual from cover to cover (and I still would probably need Brian's help to interpret it.)

It's as though technology is a language in a foreign country that I've been dropped into to learn by immersion and I only know how to ask "Where's the bathroom?" and "How much is that please?" I know enough to get something to eat, but not enough to rent a car and go driving around the country to explore on my own. It seems to take me 3 times longer to learn how to navigate it. Part of it, I know, is impatience. But sometimes it feels like my brain hurts trying to comprehend it.

I am trying to push myself to be persistent when such things come up - and this morning the rewards were worth it. I had the satisfaction of seeing it work! But I'll tell you what - I almost sought out my old fashioned journal and a pen to write down my musings, and set aside the technology in the hope that it might be feeling friendlier to me later....