Ruhee Dewji

Retro #2: September 1-14

The other day, a key broke off of the little low-profile keyboard I’ve had for four and a half years. I love this keyboard. It’s pink (delightful!), it’s extremely thin and requires very little movement of my hands and wrists, and it easily connects to multiple computers. Basically all I need in a keyboard.

A monochromatic pale pink keyboard with the K key broken off

I ordered a new one. But because it’s been almost five years, the same keyboard isn’t available anymore—there’s a new version. It’s still pink, but the shade is different, and now there’s contrast. I was annoyed.

A small pink keyboard, pretty similar to the last one, but the body is darker while the keys are lighter.

At first I was like … I hate this. I just want the same silly pale-pink keyboard. I want it to look like the old one because I liked the old one. I hate that everything has to change so that by the time you wear out something that shouldn’t even wear out that quickly you have to buy a NEW one instead of fix the OLD one because I LIKED THAT ONE and change is STUPID and UNNECESSARY.

Then I went outside for a bit because … wow.

After having my stupid little tantrum about a stupid little $49 keyboard (do NOT @ me about mechanical keyboards) I looked at them both again and some things became more apparent. The old one is cute, but there’s a bunch of keys that don’t sit straight anymore. You can’t really see it in the photo, but the matte finish has completely worn off most of the keys. The left shift key sometimes needs to be pressed in a different spot because it’s a little bit stuck. I can’t reattach the K key because the plastic mechanism is broken, and there are no replacement keys for a keyboard this inexpensive.

The new one, however, works perfectly and still looks cute—different, but cute. It’s more comfortable to type on because the keys sit straight. There’s actually nothing wrong with it besides the fact that it’s not the old one, and it’s otherwise the same keyboard. (I still prefer the colour of the old one, though.) Now I’m much happier with it: it’s got a working K key, and it actually solves all of those problems that I hadn’t acknowledged were problems until they weren’t there anymore.

Anyway, this was a story about how it took me too long to quit my old job.

The last two weeks

(Here’s the first retro.)

I deactivated my Instagram. I don’t have any FOMO, exactly, but I know that I will reactivate because there are two large categories of things I can’t reliably find elsewhere:

  1. Local restaurant/cafe information - hours, menus, closure announcements, etc. all seem to take place on Instagram, and often on stories, which are unviewable without logging in.
  2. Show info. I can’t see Collective Concerts’ set times stories, any of my friends’ show announcements—I am begging you to cross-post them basically anywhere!!!—etc. (I am moderately close to building some kind of listings aggregator, but I don’t want to be the arbiter of submissions for such a thing…)

This sucks: I’m reliably happier and have more time for hobbies when I’m completely off instagram, but I’m hoping that being off for awhile means I am less likely to get sucked into the horrendous “suggested posts” vortex.

Speaking of hobbies, I’m working on a Musselburgh and a Forever Sweater, and I started practicing brush lettering again. It is wild how much time you can have when you’re a) not flattened by work stress and b) not looking at stuff designed to make you feel like shit on the internet.

Some stuff I liked recently