Goal 18: Share A Story - 30 Goals Challenge

Inspired by Shelly Terrell's brilliant and inspiring series of posts, this one - Goal 18: Share a Story 30 Goals Challenge, has prompted me to share the following piece of writing which I did recently on my fab EVO Digital Storytelling course.

One of the Week 2 tasks was to post about an object which had a special significance in our life. I didn't have to think too much about the one special object which had helped transform me into who I am today. The single act of owning my very own computer helped liberate me from the irrational fear I once had about technology. I would like to share the story of my change here, and hopefully it may inspire someone else to promote a change which will have positive effects. As Shelly says, stepping out of one's comfort zone, to embrace change is essential for us to transform ourselves. Find out more about this quote - "Soil is the substance of transformation."
I have just read "Soil" by David Warr. It is an amazing post.

It's a coincidence that I mentioned I'm avidly reading "Soil, Humus and Manure" the other day. A very apt and topical subject!! You might also like to view "The Good Earth", a post I wrote a few years ago and which ties in with the same theme....Soil is definitely the topic of the day!!

The image above is one of my favourite ones and I have posted it before. I have just added a tuxpi colour swirl effect to change it a little bit.

My Computer

I can't imagine my life without my faithful and vintage computer. It has become an integral part of my daily existence. Its meaning is immeasurable. And yet, just a few short years ago, this simply wasn't the case at all.

I was a true "technophobe". I lived a simple life. Creating lesson activities using basic Word on the school computer, sending a few emails to friends every now and then. That was it.
No Powerpoint presentations, no Twitter, no blogging, no Web 2.0 tools, no Flickr, no Facebook. A very simple and easy life indeed!

Until that is, something happened which was to change my life overnight. The one and only computer we had, which belonged to my husband, and which he used for his work at home, crashed. It died a slow, painful death, sometime in November 2008. We had to buy a new computer to save the day. It was then I decided that I would like to have my very own computer, but only if the "dead" one could be brought back to life again. My logic in this was that if a computer had already sunk to its lowest depth, then a technophobe like me would have no worries if I accidentally "broke" it again. It wouldn't matter to anybody else but myself. The computer had already "been there, done that and got the T-shirt" to prove itself.

Armed with this very basic logic, and with ever increasing confidence, I set about actually using the computer as you see above, slowly but surely on a more regular basis. I began to use a webcam, I started to Skype with my former colleagues at the Lake School in Oxford, sometimes joining in with the monthly Academic Meetings.

My new world in the Abruzzo countryside with only the gentle patter of hundreds of sheep occasionally roaming past, the swaying of olive tree branches, the barking of wild dogs, the occasional sound of gunshots being fired from hunters seeking wild boar, the chickens clucking merrily away, all these things blended gracefully into my new adventure with technology.

If it weren't for my Gateway 865OGB computer, I wouldn't be doing this Digital Storytelling course today.

I owe it my life, which is full of exciting technology. I will hang onto it tenaciously until the day it eventually bites the dust.

Until that fateful moment comes, it will continue to be my Gateway to the outside world.