Talkin' bout my generation.

Captain's Log, Stardate April 19, 2015.  We continue to venture where no one has gone before, in our attempt to discover the inner-workings of Comcast and their wireless offerings.  I am still unable to connect to wifi, leaving me the options of crouching on top of my washer while ethernet-connected to the modem OR, and more desirably, highjacking Bruce's laptop to access the outside world when I need to type more than I can hunt or peck on my ipad.

If you want to feel dumber than a doornail, simply try to talk to anyone a generation above or below yours.  Each day without internet access, which is clearly isolated only to my computer, makes less sense, and makes me more convinced that I'm turning into one of those crazy old people who just doesn't "get" technology.

Generation Gap.

Working in a public high school offers a lot of opportunities to stay somewhat current in my understanding of technology.  My district offered lessons in Skype right around the same time that Oprah started using it on her show. My students later convinced me to try ooVoo, as it was less glitchy, and offered a more broad-based opportunity to add multiple participants, with much better graphics, and fewer dropped connections.  

Admittedly, my students are lightyears ahead of me in their ability to pick up a device and navigate their way through the intricacies of the screens, using whatever is new in a matter of moments, as if they'd lived with that program, app, or device for their entire lives.

I had a discussion with my mother today, and she commented on the value of friendships with multi-aged individuals.  Yes, I believe I have friends in their twenties - former students who share genuine interests with me.  I also have friends in their thirties, forties, sixties, and seventies, and a couple in their eighties, who all offer unique perspectives.  She, too, shares friends across decades, and values the knowledge they bring from their point in their lives and corner of the world, which help her shape her own understanding with greater perspective.

I still don't understand why my computer doesn't work.  Given that there have been more than seven people, from a variety of levels of expertise and age, working on this for more than I week, I feel a tad vindicated for my ability to at least articulate what isn't working, even if I have no clear reason to explain why.  (The fact that none of them can explain it either helps a lot!)

The fun in life comes from the journey.  Along that journey, weird stuff happens, often defying explanation, and challenging us to ask more questions, find more answers, and realize that the answers we sought all along weren't really the goal of our journey in the first place.  It's the people we discover along the way that offer us the stories that become legen-(wait for it) dary.  

Sometimes we think we need the whole picture before we truly understand the whole process, when the process was what we needed to experience in the first place.

I still don't have internet.  I have a lot of friends.  My interconnectedness exists in the span of my friendships across generations.  (Awwww!)  And tomorrow, I will conquer Comcast and begin my 55th year on this planet with a whole new connection.  Come hell, aka Comcast, or high water.  (Rain is expected.)