my love hate relationship

I have a love hate relationship-Come to think of it- I have a few of those. But I have one particular irritant/pleasure button in mind. I vacillate between total adoration and awe, to pound that sucker in the face with a rubber mallet. What could inspire such moods swings? (other than being 50 something and in the throws of "THE CHANGE?")

SIDE NOTE- the change? *snort* What are you changing into? A fish? A piece of tile? Why do they call it that? I despise that vernacular. It makes you feel like everyone is just standing around waiting to see what you'll change into. "Hey look- mom just changed into a ginormous hostess twink-isn't that cool!"
Mostly you just change into an older, grumpier, more forgetful, more wrinkled, way warmer, fatter you- That's not much of a change. Now if my entire self changed into Sean Connery instead of just my chin becoming alarmingly similar to his, - that would really be something to get your nickers in a knot about. Change *humf*

Back to loven and haten- TECHNOLOGY! Now that is something to get your pants in a wad over!
As I stated, I am 50 something and I remember the days when to get a piece of artwork published I had to go through the following procedures and time line:

1. Paint the thing-2 days work
2. Using a non digital camera with film inside it, I would take pictures of the painting. 10 minutes
3. Wait until all the film has been exposed because you cant just get one picture out of that camera, you have to use up all 24 exposures- about a month
4. Take the film to get developed-better part of a day because there were always other things to do in town.
5. Wait for the film to be developed and come back- 5 days-if you were lucky- there was no one hour photo finishing 21 years ago when I started this gig.
6. Mail the pictures to the publisher-(in the US this took 3 days- in Canada it take 3 weeks)GRRRRRR!
7. Wait for a reply from the publisher- refer to #6 only in reverse.
If they liked the painting, then you had to ship the original to them. But first you have to wait until Stew decides he wants to make a trip to the border because here in outer darkness Raymond Alberta Canada, we have no UPS outlets. Let's just say Stew waits a week before he makes the drive- that takes an hour- and the shipping takes 3 days. UPS rules, Canada Post DROOOOLS!
8. Publisher takes about 2 weeks to publish-give or take a few days.
SO the grand total is approximately the better part of 4 months before you can purchase a print of the original painting at Bed Bath and Beyond or Winners.

Now we will look at the advantages of modern technology.
Paint the painting- for our purposes here today- we will still use a hand painted original.
1. Paint the thing-1 day. (I'm getting better at this and thus have been able to shave some time off for good behavior)
2. Take a picture of it with my digital camera- 5 seconds
3. Download the picture to my computer and edit it- 3 minutes on a good day
4. Send the picture to my publisher by email- 1 minute
5. If said publisher is on line- I will get a WHOAH we love this or a nah that's rubbish-try again in about 2 minutes.
Total time (DRUM ROLL) 1 day to paint it- 6 minutes, 5 seconds to send and get a reply.
Still have to send the original by UPS with a trip to the border-still live in outer darkness, but you can see the definite advantages, can't you!
CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE???!!!ummm hummm this is the LOVE part.
Last year my sweet art director invited me to her home in Chicago and painstakingly and with the patience of Job taught me the VERY basics of photo shop. There's another love hate relationship all together-which I shall save for another day. Creating artwork on photo shop takes out the border trip- I just send the images over the Internet and bingo bango bongo- it's published and slapped on the selves in a matter of weeks. What is not to LOVE!

Now for the hate part. It takes me for EVER to learn how to work all these things- The computer, the camera, the changing from a pds to a jpeg, what the @ell is a widget and why does that fortune cookie sometimes come up on my emails? DPI and layered TIFF files- up and downloading, folders and zip files.
Not to mention all the other gadgets we just cannot love without- like cell phones- and said cell phone must be a mini computer/tv/can opener. There are Ipads and kindles, gps devices, and by the time you get the nerve up to buy one and figure out how the cuss to use it, it's obsolete and the newer, better more complicated one is a must have!!

Do you really want to know how it feels to be on the cusp of how I grew up and all this advanced wizardry? Knowing just enough to make you feel like you should know it all? (My parents or old enough that they don't even try- but I am in the middle of this techno sandwich so you have the feeling you better get with it or you may vanish into thin air and become totally irrelevant.)
I'll tell you. It's like when you were 13 years old and everyone got invited to the birthday party but you. No, that's not quite right. The pit in your stomach feels about the same but no, that's not quite it. It's as if everyone else is riding a crotch rocket motorcycle and they are driving toward a huge pile of money and you are on roller skates- the metal kind that hook to your shoe with a skate key. You'll get there, maybe, eventually- if you don't give up or die first, but it takes way more work and after awhile you just want to chug up and down the same piece of sidewalk because you already know how to do that and it works for what you need most of the time. BUT you know if you could just get to that big pile of dough, things would be so amazing and so much better...........Or would they?