Grumbling and Stumbling Toward Change
I’m coming up on the anniversary of moving to my farm twenty-five years ago. It coincides with my dysfunctional affair with technology. My first night here was a full-moon Halloween. I know this because I wrote important dates on my calendar. This means that at the end of one year, I hand-copied it all onto the next year’s calendar. I’m bad with dates, but I had Y2K spelled out on New Year’s Eve. Calendars have improved.
A few months earlier, a client came into my gallery to show me a drawing program on his computer. He thought it would be a great tool to describe potential designs to clients. What an insult. I was indignant. My Montblanc Meisterstuck LeGrand fountain pen with gold trim did me very well. Thank you.
Around the same time, a friend and I were writing screenplays together. He bought software for his computer, so we didn’t have to do all those crazy-making tabs manually. After using that writing program, my typewriter was like using charcoal on bark in front of a campfire. I couldn’t stand it.
I stayed in limbo for a few more years. Then, I bravely purchased my first computer, a Gateway, as much for the cow print box as anything. I didn’t know computers, but I knew Holsteins. Mine lived in a cabinet the size of a refrigerator. For the first year, I spent twenty hours a week waiting on the helpline. It was a part-time job. It took that long to figure out that no matter the problem, their answer was always the same. Reboot, they said. Eventually, I learned to reboot it myself without calling first. It felt like I had achieved brilliance.
Technology exploded in equal parts convenience and a threat. Love and hate. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t want to learn it, but I wasn’t sure I could live without it. Perfect ambivalence. Other people had half a chance. They had kids, but I didn’t and I couldn’t be borrowing theirs forever. Besides, I was a horsewoman. I rode thousand-pound half-wild animals and would not get bucked off a computer. Well, not without a fight.
Then my life came apart. People died. Friends stopped being friends. The building where I leased gallery space sold, and I got evicted. And my best old dog died. I lost so much in such a short time that I felt I had nothing left to lose. I just wanted to go home, but I didn’t have one to go back to. So, I bought a farm for my horses and left the city. It made as much sense as anything else.
Moving to my farm was a step back in time. Rustic would have been a flattering term, but I stayed busy. I built fence, learned to hang gates level, and tore down the old pit bull runs. At night, I howled at the moon. Work was slow. I used wheelbarrows and hand tools and could have filed horse’s hooves with my bare hands. I thought I was pretty tough. A real pioneer. But I had it switched. I’d grown up doing farm work, the pioneering I was doing was with technology. Sure, I was years behind, but I had an artist’s temperament. When dragging your feet, it’s important to have a plausible excuse.
The first month after the move, one of my horses came up lame, and the farrier told me it was White Line Disease. What? He said he’d never seen it in Colorado. A slight relief since I’d never heard of it. I pored over my horse books with no luck. I needed to know more so I could find out what went wrong and how I could avoid it in the future, but instead, I paced and worried about my other horse. Would he need a hoof re-sectioned, too?
I was only using my computer to write long lonely emails to faraway friends, thrilled that I didn’t have to wait for the mail. That was the big sell, the luxury of writing without a stamp. Since my long distance bill was the size of my mortgage, email was magic enough.
It took a day more of pacing for me to recall a thing I’d heard of called “googling.” I could try that, but I didn’t know how to find it on my computer. And it wasn’t like I could google “googling.” I was stumped. You remember those days, right?
Eventually, I called the Gateway helpline and asked them. An hour of waiting on hold later, the chuckling tech guy told me where to find it, right under my nose all the time. I typed my search into my browser and then went to the kitchen to make tea. Because it took the time it took. When my answer finally came back, my tea had cooled. Dial-up was that slow but there was more pertinent information than a library would have had.
I purchased my first cell phone when I moved, too. I had to walk out to the front corner of the property to get reception, and it still dropped calls most of the time. What I remember about those days was constant learning exhaustion. Doing vaginal flushes on my llama, stacking hay, and watching my septic tank collapse was easy compared to making peace with these small machines.
Why am I trying to amuse you with a story of struggling with a computer instead of a story of a rescue horse? Would your heart have swelled with concern and affection if the dysfunctional computer had been a stray dog? It’s not the same, you’re right. Machines aren’t alive. We resist progress if it doesn’t have a cute face.
But looking back over the same twenty-five years, has our horse world changed less? Vets now carry portable radiographs in their truck. Lifesaving drugs have been developed. Trainers like me use tablets as a learning tool for riders. A photo texted to your vet is invaluable, a video even better, and it all fits in a pocket. Saddle designs have evolved as we better understand anatomy with the help of technology. We can search an infinite online library and take courses on any topic. We can purchase what we need and get it quickly, even if we live in remote areas. From nutrition to bookkeeping, it’s all changed. I can sit at my computer and teach live lessons in New Zealand, but if someone told me this back then, I would’ve squinted sarcastically and asked Scotty to beam me up. Imagining my current life was impossible.
I don’t mean to preach. This reminiscing is meant to inspire me. I’m floundering to balance new technology with hard won common sense. Still working for an animal who deserves my best. I’ve come a long way, albeit kicking and screaming, and technology is like training horses. I’m the one who has to change.
Technology speeds along, but humans are imperfect. It can be intimidating to learn new answers to old questions. Nothing flows at first and we hear internal voices that make us doubt ourselves. My father would scoff at this new-fangled world, but do we have that choice? Can we love animals and hate technology? Rather than fight it, maybe just a spoonful of change a day. We managed to get cat photos on our cell phones, after all.
Some things haven’t changed in all my years. I’m hard-headed. I’ll grumble and stumble. But then I’ll pick myself up and get back in the saddle, like we do. Change won’t be quick and it’s rarely graceful, but we can’t all be horses.
[An audio version is available to subscribing members on Substack.]
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