That’s not progress

The IT department made me switch to a new laptop last week because my old one was out of warranty.

I don’t like the new one.

It only has one USB socket.

I need three sockets – one for my mouse, one for my keyboard (my laptop sits on a stand and acts as my screen when I’m working from home) and one for my headphones.

Apparently one socket is the modern way things are done. You are supposed to have a wireless mouse and keyboard.

Except the wireless mouse and keyboard require batteries.

That is not progress, in my opinion.

Mind you, I am the person who has never owned those weird wireless earphones everyone uses on public transport that don’t have wires and just dangle from your ear canal.

I don’t understand them either. They looks so precarious and require frantic scrabbling under seats to retrieve when they fall out.

That said, I don’t have earphones with wires either. I don’t see the point of them. I’d rather just read the subtitles while watching videos on the bus.

Maybe I’m the weird one?

I am definitely the weird one.

I have always been the weird one.

I was the kid who was dubbed the “walking dictionary” by her year 4 teacher, who was hopeless at sport and obsessed with books about dinosaurs and Greek gods.

Other kids dreamed about going to the Gold Coast on holidays, I fantasised about time travelling to ancient Crete. The Palace of Knossos had the world’s first flushing toilets back in 3000-1500 B.C, their plumbing was so freaking cool.

Speaking of plumbing … I was the teenager who submitted an essay about W.C Wentworth on a roll of toilet paper.

I was the student who accessorised her school uniform with a bow tie and green raincoat, plus a bonus black armband when Split Enz broke up.

I was the only girl wearing a fitted, black lace jacket and skirt at her school formal (above), surrounded by a sea of pastel taffeta frocks.

I started pretending I wasn’t weird during my early twenties to get ahead in the magazine industry. I understood the memo: it was about wearing the right clothes and being good at small talk.

It was stressful at first, but I loved fashion and got better at the small talk with practice. I gradually created an extroverted version of myself that I could wear like a cloak.

Extroverted Alana tells extravagant tales and lacks conversational boundaries. She tires introverted Alana out, but she’s very useful in social situations.

I wasn’t very good at one-on-one relationships until I broke up with my husband. Until then, the real me stayed hidden in safe spaces with safe people. And they were few and far between.

After my ex revealed he wasn’t a safe space and hadn’t been for a long time, I decided to stop hiding my weirdness. The worst thing had already happened, what did I have to lose?

I was in my mid-40s and tired of hiding. So I let the real me emerge. To my relief, I was generally accepted.

Every now and then I encounter someone who really dislikes to me, but they are usually rigidly neurotypical. And rigid neurotypicals are not my tribe, they’re the Pauline Hansons of the spectrum.

Give me people who are ready for the next adventure, who enjoy the no-filter downloads, the conversational rabbit holes and the sudden shifts in conversation topics.

The ones who embrace difference and diversity of thought.

I love the sense of ease that comes with being with people who accept others just the way they are.

PS How was your weekend? Mine was entirely uneventful, with nothing to report, other than a quick sprint to Newie for lunch with my mum. Unprecedented! Well, there was also possibly a bit of holiday planning, but that’s par for the course.

Song of the day: The Doors “People are strange”