Just spent half the day helping my kid format her school paper on Word. I haven’t touched that software probably in more than a decade. Always worked on alternative apps like Pages, Notes, TextEdit, Docs, Bear, iA Writer, etc.

Talk about being overwhelmed. Had to hunt and peck each button and feature and search online for tips on how to do certain things.

Never got my parents to help me with any of those as a kid because they didn’t grow up or worked with computers and to this day they still don’t know how to operate one beyond using browsers and WhatsApp. Had to figure things out myself and it was practically troubleshooting which got me into tech support before journalism kicked in.

As someone who lived through his entire life surrounded by tech products and devices and worked as tech support for a significant period, this was kind of embarrassing but also challenging and humbling. It took much longer to complete than it ought to but got it done eventually.

Getting the brain to reconnect neurons that didn’t need to connect for a long time was quite an exercise. Pretty exciting, actually, but also exhausting.