There are a certain number of tools that are essential to me in my every day life, the reasons for which range from study to creative writing to general organisation of my calendar and keeping me entertained. Today, I would like to introduce them to you.
My phone
I have owned my iPhone 4 (I'd provide a link to a product description, but I'm pretty sure everyone on the planet knows what I'm talking about) for just over a year now. Before that, I hadn't owned a smartphone before -- hell, I even resented phones with cameras on them. I subscribed to the firm belief that a phone is for texting and occasional calling and sometimes the casual entertainment of playing snake -- the original one, you know, where the snake was just a bunch of pixels. That game used to entertain me for hours as a child.
Still, all of that has changed. Now, I use my phone to text and to make calls, sure, but it also houses my calendar, my e-mail, my twitter, my facebook and my music; I can even use it to do some emergency banking. One of its primary uses is to google things when people don't believe that I know everything about everything. Another function is to keep me entertained during lectures when I'm either too tired to be kept awake by the drone of the lecturer, or they are covering things I knew previously, mostly via casual games far more flashy but no more intricate than snake ever was.
Simply put, I carry around the outlines of my life on my phone, and I find it an immensely useful tool for the little things you might need but don't want to pull your laptop out for. It took me four generations to get there, but I'm happy with my smartphone, and I'm never going back.
Good ol' pens, pencils & paper
After that overflowing praise for new technology, I think I should balance it out by singing the merits of inventions probably except not older than the dinosaurs. Everyone has probably used pencils, pens and paper at some point in their life, even if it's confined to studying in primary, middle & high school. At university level, (I guess that) people generally drop that habit and go for the easier organisation of bytes on a computer. Still, I find that writing things down on a piece of paper requires a certain amount of thought that I don't put into my writing when I type things up on a computer, since when I type, my fingers are generally an extension of my mind. Something goes through my brain and into my fingers, and then it's gone. If I use paper, I'm able to remember it in a way that wouldn't have been possible with a keyboard. I don't know what it is -- perhaps it's the fact that I simply have to slow down my thoughts to put it down on paper, or the effort of using the muscles in my hand in a particular way to form a particular word in a more profound way than just dancing them over the keyboard.
I use a paper and a pen for a myriad of things, such as jotting down ideas when on the go, working out problems, brainstorming for essays and other assignments, and writing down little scenes when I feel like it. But most of all, I use them out of habit, and out of the simple joy of having tangible bits of your story or research or study at hand.
My laptop
The extent to which I rely on my laptop is probably best highlighted by those few weeks of stress, anxiousness and general craziness that occurred in the few weeks I was between laptops due to my old one breaking down on me unexpectedly. Without exaggerating a bit, I can say that I was driven up one wall, across the ceiling and down the opposite wall. Apart from that vague anecdote, I can't really put into words how important my laptop is to me: there are probably a thousand small ways in which I rely on it that I can't point out now that I actually have it.
The particular make of laptop I have right now is an ASUS U36SD with an i5 processor. It's a marvelous little thing, and it hasn't really failed me in anything, except maybe for having a shittier trackpad than a macbook, which really isn't that uncommon. I emphasise the "little thing" part of that description, because it is seriously light and seriously tiny -- and I absolutely love it that way. The point of a laptop for me is to use it for studying (I generally use a notebook and a pencil in class, and then, as a manner of revision, type up my lectures on my laptop), creative writing and just generally housing all my music, pictures and word files. That means it has to be relatively quick, relatively light and comfortable to use -- which isn't really much to ask. So far, this particular laptop is not only doing its job, but making me feel awesome about doing mine, and there's just no higher praise than that.
So, those are the three pieces of hardware (in the loosest definition of the term) I use every day to organise my nerdiness, geekiness and creativeness, and to satisfy my general OCD-ness. Are there any pieces of equipment you couldn't part with, because your life would be in shambles if you did? Tell me about them in the comments section!
p.s. Please don't hate me for mashing together (and bastardising) two lines of the poem from Lord of the Rings. I assure you that I meant no harm!
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