The Ghost of Steve Jobs came to visit me and said to remember that I have 30 days before I have to send my old iPhone back to Apple.
Thirty days to make sure I have transferred all of my important data from the old phone to the new one and that I am satisfied the old is wiped clear of my personal information.
He forgot to mention the importance of going into each app to make sure that I have input my log-in and password information so that I might activate them for us on the new device.
Tom Petty is singing Free Fallin’ while I go about my business so I am mildly distracted as he sings about my Valley home.
Ran into Tom and a few other folks while I went about my business but still haven’t seen Dave Grohl at Ralphs market like some friends. Don’t care about many celebrities, but Grohl is of interest, loved his book and he seems like a good guy.
Always interested in meeting the good guys who are creative to ask them about their creative process. Don’t care about the famous part, but you don’t always encounter creative people who aren’t. That doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands of creative folks because there are, but you don’t necessarily know who they are.
So you pick on who you are exposed to and ask them to explain how they create.
Took a short Yom Kippur nap and had a dream that wasn’t what you would call in spirit of Yom Kippur and mulled over sharing it but chose not to.
It demonstrated again that my imagination is quite active and that I might choose to pursue certain goals. Tell me something will never happen or is unlikely and I may laugh because I can make it happen.
Or I may ignore it because whether I can make it happen or not is unimportant to me. Hard to say how some things will go because sometimes the answer to a question is “I don’t know.”
I am far better at living with the uncertainty of some things than I was when I was a younger man because life has taught me how to do so.
Reminds me of when my old friend David, gone for 26 years now, but not forgotten said that sometimes we have to live with not knowing.
A heady remark for a scientist, but he believed it and I do too…mostly.
Depends on what it is, I get paid to keep going.
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Got a half dozen books on Audible to listen to, some podcasts and am reading two books while I weave in and out of the traffic of daily life.
Some are for entertainment, some for education and some for just processing the crap that comes through.
Started rewatching Field of Dreams while I walk on the treadmill and some of it grabs me in a way that is different from how it once did.
Broke the fast at home and thought about decades of memories of doing so in Texas and Los Angeles.
It occurred to me that for a long stretch of time I did so with my parents’ new chavurah and how all of the women from that group who are still in Los Angeles are widows now.
None of the young married couples are young any more and neither are our children. For that matter most of us left Los Angeles for other places but periodically our paths have crossed back home, here in Texas, Pennsylvania and in New Jersey.
Once upon a time we listened to the older people talk about their senior citizen age parents and what they were doing to help and now we’re holding those discussions.
Now I hear about which siblings are good at helping and which aren’t and all the other stuff that comes with it.
My new iPhone has me thinking about other tales of tech and how the challenges that sometimes come with helping our parents with their devices.
I solved a problem at the store and one at home for my Gen Z son and the kid who helped us. The younger Mr. Wilner wasn’t surprised that I knew the answer, but the guy at the store felt silly because he thought I was old.
“Generation X is the bridge between the digital and analog worlds. I have had this cellphone number for at least 25 years, but have had a cellphone for close to 30. Could tell you about the BlackBerry (loved it) and several Motorolas.”
The salesman smiled at me and said he should have figured it out and I nodded my head.
“So much of this is so obvious we just forget. Amazing how easy it is to reboot and fix a problem huh.”
