I Didn’t Announce My Absence (My Laptop Did)

I didn’t announce my absence because I didn’t know I was going anywhere. My laptop just didn’t wake up one morning. No warning. No goodbye. No dramatic final error message. It simply chose death.

I tried everything. Restarted it. Charged it. Talked to it like a sick pet. Googled symptoms. Asked GPT like it was a grief counselor.

GPT told me my laptop died of natural causes.

Natural causes.

For a machine.

Apparently this is a known issue, which is offensive information to learn after the funeral. I felt like the whole world collapsed. Not in a dramatic movie way, but in the quiet way where you realize your entire brain lives inside a rectangle that has decided it no longer respects you.

That laptop was my best friend. My therapist. My filing cabinet. My bad idea storage unit. My password holder. My witness.

So naturally, everyone asked, “Why don’t you just get another Windows laptop?”

Because I felt like GPT and Copilot pulled me aside and said, Listen. You can either get the dependable Apple, or when the next Windows laptop dies in three years, you are absolutely on your own, kid.

Even my kids sided with Apple. Of course they did. They said things like, “It just works, Mom,” which is extremely bold coming from people who still call me to ask where their documents went.

So now I have a Mac.

And let me tell you something about aging. It is mostly about being forced to learn new things against your will. Just when you think you have mastered life, it hands you a new operating system and moves all the buttons for sport.

I am not retired. But my age clearly is.

Relearning macOS feels personal. Like Apple looked at me and said, Let’s see how curious you still are. Some days I feel smart. Other days I Google things like “why won’t my computer let me drag this thing” and stare at the screen like it insulted my family.

While setting everything back up, I discovered something worse than the learning curve.

I have too much stuff.

Files. Notes. Lists. Lists of lists. Drafts of thoughts I was very serious about at the time. Plans that made perfect sense to a past version of me who clearly had more energy and fewer opinions.

I started noticing that when you don’t keep up with the times, things pile up quietly. That’s how it happened to my parents. Their business flourished when they adapted. And when they stopped, it slowly broke them. Not because they weren’t smart. But because change does not care how tired you are.

That realization hit harder than the laptop death.

So now I think this might be my season of purge. Not the dramatic, throw-everything-away, new-year-new-me purge. The intentional one. Keep what still works. Let go of what only exists because I’ve been carrying it for years. Buy less. Choose better. Stop dragging things forward just because they once mattered.

I will still try to resuscitate my old laptop. I am not heartless. But I also have a new toy now. And I am choosing not to sit on the floor crying over a machine that already moved on without me.

That might be what aging actually is. Accepting curveballs. Learning new systems. Laughing at yourself. Admitting that staying relevant requires effort, humility, and occasionally yelling at a screen.

I didn’t disappear.

My laptop did.

I’m back. Slightly confused. Mildly offended. Still learning.