Because I was a reluctant convert to my iPhone, my daughter emailed me a link to an article in the New York Times magazine, the Medium. She commented that I could have written the piece that Virginia Heffernan wrote.
I did write a post last June about my conversion to an iPhone. Heffernan describes some of the same fear I had of this technology, but she's still in the "I Hate my iPhone" stage, the title of her piece.
I read Heffernan's article. I smiled. I identified. Then I noticed that there were 450-and-counting comments. I felt lucky to have gotten even a handful of comments to my iPhone post! Her readers' comments ranged from "You're funny!" to "You get paid to write this crap?" Well, maybe it's okay not to have quite that many readers.
I decided that Heffernan's negative commenters must be those hip-techno-insensitive youthful readers who just don't get it. They clearly wouldn't have understood why MY iPhone sat in a really scary black box on my desk for five months while I got up the courage to open the box and use the phone.
I can definitely blame my reluctance on that four-letter "F" word: FEAR.
Fear. It's what keeps me from going after many of my dreams. It holds me hostage in the Land of Stuckville. It prevents me from working on my book, sending out submissions, or taking a writing risk.
Since I work with people who are afraid to fly, I know all about FEAR. It stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear of flying is very real. My iPhone fear was very real. But I can now see all that False Evidence for what it was.
Those little glowing icons that looked so scary to an old, technologically challenged person like me? I thought I needed simple--green for SEND and red for END.
The touching and tapping? Surely I'd touch or tap the wrong thing, the wrong number, the wrong little icon!
And internet browsing and email checking from my phone? That's what my laptop is for.
I even kept using the "I'm too old" reason, but it was just another big excuse for FEAR.
Eventually my hip youngest daughter helped me open my iPhone box and confront my FEAR. All false evidence, I discovered, after a few days of practice. Now I rely on this amazing tool with its snazzy icons and multitudes of uses and applications. Now I don't leave home without it!
So what's your excuse? Too old? Too technologically stupid? Too unwilling to confront your fear? What is in that scary black box on your desk that you've been too afraid to bring out?
Open the darn box and find out!
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