Old Dog, New Trick

My dad has always loved technology. We had a little video game console in our house way before anyone else did, and at one point we had the only movie camera (no sound, just images) in the neighborhood. (P.S. I swear my dad could conceal that stupid camera up his sleeve and would suddenly whip it just as you swamped the canoe.)

Anyway, with the wave of computers, and a distaste for spending money, he hasn’t really kept up recently.

My siblings and I took it upon ourselves to bring him up to speed. So we got him a tablet for Christmas.

He’s never quite got the double click mouse thing under control, so we figured a touch screen might be just the thing to calm him down.

He opened it, and eyed the box with suspicion while everyone else opened their presents. My husband had the tablet charged and ready to go, so we made my dad get it out of the box and turn it on.

For a few minutes it looked like my dad thought it may bite him. (Maybe there’s an app for that, I don’t know.) But once the boys of the family got the wireless up and going, my husband (who knows way too much about way too many things) sat down and started to inundate my dad with too much information.

In a good way.

By the time we left, he’d installed Google Night Sky (or whatever it’s called) and was looking at the stars as they are seen in China at this time of year.

A few years ago my siblings and I went in together to get my dad a toaster over—something he’d talked about getting a thousand times and never had. That was a stroke of genius on our part. The jury is up in the air about whether or not the tablet will beat out the toaster oven. Only time can tell.

The moral of the story—because there has to be one—is that if you feel like there is a part of you that you want to change, you can do it.

If my dad can become tablet savvy, then you can learn to tap dance, finish those craft projects, only yell at the kids twice a day, finish your degree, start a business, write that novel or learn to slow down.

Each day is a new start. It may not feel like it, but if you shift your focus from the hole you’re in to the way to get out, then you can change whatever it is you want to change.

And that’s my New Year’s blah, blah.

Anyone making any crazy goals? Changing anything awesome?