My Laptop Died (part 1)

I never start with my own personal tech stuff. My first smart phone was a hand-me-down from my older brother. I never owned a gaming console. My brothers have many each, I just use theirs, or borrow. I got my first laptop in 2019, when I was already finished with college. It was my now-wife's old laptop. She gave it to me for my birthday, a few months after she had gotten a new one. Later, she would remark that she wonders why she didn't give it to me as soon as she could - while I was still in college.

Can you imagine that? I got my first REAL PERSONAL smartphone - after my brother's hand-me-down - in 2015. I went to college for four years, and the whole time, I had no laptop. ... Ok, well, I did have a computer, but it was really really old, and basically the family computer from 2010, with no internet connection, and it was slow and limited and really only good for Microsoft Word. I also had the updated family computer. But throughout college: no laptop. I majored in graphic design. How did I do that? (well, I used the computer lab at school)

Anyway, I finished college, and I got a laptop from my then-fiancee. I used it for anything but school and work. Laptops/computers are useful and fun. As time would go on, I would switch back to a flip phone (in the year of our Lord 2024AD), and my laptop would become a regularly used gadget.

I played games, wrote stories, drew pictures, journaled, browsed the internet, organized music to put on my MP3 player. It was on old laptop by then. From 2014 or so, and now it's 2025. It's slow, it heats up when I play games or video call my brothers. My wife got a new laptop a few months ago, replacing the one she got in 2019 that allowed her to give me the 2014 one. But I wasn't ready to make the switch.

She goes on work trips occasionally, leaving me alone for a few days, or two weeks. It was day one of being alone. I was sitting on the couch with Youtube on the TV idly playing something in the background as I was drawing something to post on Instagram. It was around 3:15AM, I needed to be up before 11:30AM. So, to get at most 8 hours of sleep, I was getting ready to stop in the next 10 to 20 minutes. Then, the cursor stopped moving. Not to worry, I'll just restart my laptop. ... As it turned back on, I wasn't greeted with my user name and place to put in a password. I was met with a grey screen and a grey folder icon with a question mark, blinking. I restarted it again. It took me a moment to realize I had never seen that before.

I looked it up on Youtube on the TV. A man in a video gave me many options. Like "hold Command + Option + R as you restart it." or other sets of keys. The best I could do was reach a screen of options that let me do something like back up my laptop, or reinstall the operating system. For it had seemed that my laptop could no longer find/read the internal hard drive. I didn't want to mess anything up, so I decided to look up laptop repair shops. I came to the realization that my laptop might not be fixable. I hoped to find a place that offered the service of extracting data off a dying hard drive. I had work at Noon, and didn't get off until 9:30P. And it was 5AM. The sun was starting to come up. I would not have any time to GO to a repair shop before work. I wouldn't even have time to get enough sleep! And I couldn't even IMAGINE getting any sleep in this mood. I couldn't imagine going to work and leaving this problem unsolved until the next time I would be able to make it to a repair shop.

I decided that I'd call off work. I would wake up around 9, and tell my supervisor that I had a nondescript emergency. He's cool. I didn't doubt he'd let me have half the day off. I managed to fall asleep, and at 9AM, I did just that. He let me have the whole day off. Then I fell back asleep until noon, read reviews of laptop repair places, made a couple calls to them, then I took my laptop and external hard drive to the shop of my choice, explained that I wanted them to see if they can save the data off my dead laptop and put it on my external hard drive. They said they'd keep in touch, and then I went back home.

My wife is a PhD. She has a lot of papers and thesis things on her laptop. Even still on her old laptop - my new one now, I guess. I'm not a cool student like her. I just have a lot of little things. Music, drawings, short stories, work-in-progress personal projects, writings. Things like that. I felt sick all day that day. Like when you wake up early and can't stomach to eat any food. That was me, all day. I could barely swallow a slice of plain bread. I took a nap.

After my nap, I found my old smart phone and poked around on it. I looked at old pictures, played a game. Watched some videos. I didn't have a laptop to keep my company. I love my pooter; all my frens are in it! And the worst part: I had considered - just one week prior - to try and set up the 2019 laptop for myself. If I had bothered starting the process at all, I might have had already saved everything from my now-dead laptop to my external hard drive. But no, last week, when consciously confronted with that option, I decided against it, because it seemed "too stressful". Well, now I'm dying!

I stayed in bed for hours. I ate nothing. I was slumped in the center of the bed, feet nearly hanging off the end, in a t-shirt and underwear. From 3 to 5, I wondered if I should go to work. I decided against it, and to give in to despair. It was a mental health day.

My wife was in an area out of service. At 8:30, I called my mom. I walked around the apartment. I drank some water. I told her all about what happened. And about other things. Just getting a lot off my chest. I stayed on the phone with her as I walked two blocks over to Little Ceasars. Then we ended the call. I walked back home and watched a movie. I could only stomach two slices.