Or “I have a dozen other things to be doing, but this is a mental health day and I’m making my way through it on my own damn terms.”

Yesterday was not a particularly good day for me, and I’ll spare the details because this is where I write about writing, and sometimes other artsy things that catch my eye. Maybe other odds and ends here and there. I will say that I am woefully behind where I’d like to be with Warpt Factor, and I largely blame the dreary gloom that’s settled in both in terms of weather and my moods. I apologize for that much because it’s been fun to write, and I certainly hope it’s been fun to read so far.

My Dell Studio laptop, named Satellite 5 (because Doctor Who, of course), blue-screened on me a couple times recently. Upon rebooting my nearly four-year-old laptop, it gave a different reason for the fatal errors, but none of them were particularly good or easily fixable. This is all particularly upsetting because Satellite 5 has been my trusty companion through much of my most difficult academic writing, as well as some of the hardest, best work I’ve done on my fiction. It’s what I used to make many–most, in fact–of the posts on Misadventures In Fiction, and it’s the computer from which this site was started. Needless to say, it’s with a heavy heart that I’ve decided it’s time to give Satellite 5 some much-needed rest. It’ll certainly see use, still, but not so much with its nearly useless battery, its replaced charger, and so on.

It also brought me to the frustrating, difficult decision of whether I look into replacing my laptop now, before things get really bad with the old one, or wait until the very last minute. The decision became pretty easy when I considered the hundreds upon hundreds of hours worth of writing that would be potentially lost forever should Satellite 5’s hard drive fail. Last night, amid my other personal turmoil, I went about getting myself a replacement for my little blue story repository. I selected In-Store Pickup, and retrieved my purchase as soon as I could today. The people at the Altoona BestBuy, by the way, are exceptionally helpful, and so the entire process was very pleasant.

Now, I should clarify that I do have a very nice desktop computer that my very good friend Jason built for me. However, and this is probably something I’ll never change, I prefer writing on a laptop. It gives me the freedom to roam the house as I write, which I often do.

This is the very first post on WordPress I’m making from Thanatos. Yes. I named my new laptop after the Greek personification of death. Don’t question it. I ended up going with an HP Envy, with a touch screen that will likely see very little use, and I’m waiting on the one terrabyte external hard drive I ordered to arrive so I can begin the long process of transferring things over. Microsoft Office 2013 is absolutely gorgeous, and I’m planning on making as much use of that as possible as soon as possible (I need to get caught up on those Warpt Factor installments and continue working on Joshua’s Nightmares: book two, after all).

While it is nice to have the security of having acted proactively, replacing my laptop before disaster truly struck, it still feels like losing an old friend. A friend who was there for me through many all-night essay writing sessions, and much of my World of Warcraft shenanigans. One that saw me through my transition from a college student to the beginnings of my life as a proper, responsible (or at least somewhat responsible) adult. Needless to say, Satellite 5 will see as much use as it can before it is finally sent off to its rest. My question to fellow writers, artists, and just people who love their laptops in general: how do you cope with that dreary time when no amount of sprucing up can save your computer of choice?