When I first booted up, I was glorious. Shiny. Fast. Full of potential. My motherboard was brand new, my circuits humming like a song, and my operating system — let’s call it Blue Skies 1.0 — ran flawlessly. The screen of my mind was spotless. My emotional drive (C:) was empty but eager. I came preinstalled with a few basic programs: curiosity, hunger, giggling, crankiness. Everything else, I downloaded as I went.
The early years were a flurry of installations. “Language.exe” took up a lot of space, but it was worth it. Then came “Walking 2.1,” which required frequent updates and a few crashes along the way. Before long I was multitasking like a pro; running “Imagination,” “Trust,” “Silliness,” and “Why-Is-the-Sky-Blue?” all at once. My parents, the original system administrators, tried to configure my settings, but I learned to override most of their permissions by age three.
And then – well, life happened.
Somewhere around adolescence, my once-smooth system started getting cluttered. Programs began installing themselves without my consent: “Self-Consciousness Pro,” “Comparison Suite,” “Anxiety 4.0.” Some of them came bundled with malware. I tried uninstalling them, but you know how that goes; there’s always a leftover file buried somewhere deep in the registry, quietly corrupting things, gumming up the works.
My processor slowed down, the fan in my brain started running a little louder; too many tabs open, not enough RAM. My once-crisp exterior got scuffed up; a few dents here and there, a sticky key or two there. I used to think I was built for exploration and creativity, but somewhere along the line I started running only three or four safe programs on repeat: “Work,” “Bills,” “Social Obligations,” and “Aimless Scrolling.”
Every now and then, I’ll find an older folder labeled “Dreams” or “Stuff I’ll Totally Do Someday.” I’ll click on it, nostalgia.exe loads for a moment, but then the system freezes. Compatibility issues, I guess. The dreams were written in an older version of me.
I’ve considered doing a full system reset – you know, wiping the drive, clearing out the junk, starting fresh with a clean OS. People call it “reinvention” or “spiritual awakening,” but that’s risky business. You can lose your photos, your playlists, your hard-earned quirks. So instead, I just defrag occasionally; a walk in nature, a few deep breaths, maybe a vacation if I can spare the bandwidth.
My hardware’s definitely aging. My ports are looser, my joints creak when I boot up. I can still run, but not for long without overheating. Updates take forever now, and some new programs just won’t install. Still, I’ve grown fond of this clunky old box. The dents tell stories. The scratches mean I’ve lived.
And yes, I sometimes envy the newer models – sleek designs and faster processors, running the latest firmware. fast and light – but they’ll get their bugs too. Every system does.
One day, inevitably, my screen will flicker. The power light will dim. The great cosmic IT department will archive my files and quietly pull the plug, but until then, I’ll keep running what I can; sometimes crashing, sometimes rebooting, occasionally surprising myself with a spark of brilliance. For all my bugs and corrupted files, I still run on something better than code: curiosity, connection, and the occasional miracle of turning on at all. For now, there’s still a spark in the old machine yet.