I wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Even as a child who had just recently learned how to write the alphabet, I wanted to grow up to be a journalist. This desire never faded, and I got into the industry professionally when I was in my early teens. Back in those days – the late 1990s – I was still using a typewriter to craft my articles. I was working for a newspaper at the time, and would type up my first drafts on an ancient manual typewriter. To this day, I blame my heavy-handed typing on the amount of force I had to use to press those manual keys down!
My grandma got an electronic word processor around this time, which was immensely easier to use since you could draft up what you wanted to say before committing it to paper. What a concept, huh? The most hateful part of typewriters to me was the fact that you would inevitably hit the wrong key and have a permanent blotch on your paper – Wite-out was just a fact of life. Even better was when you were really in the zone writing something and the letters started to fade as your typewriter ribbon ran out of ink. Ugh! But both the word processor and my relic of a typewriter would be rendered obsolete once we had PCs of our own. As I type this, I think how much more time-consuming this would have been to write in 1997!
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly things have changed and what we’ve gained with technology. In 16 years, I’ve gone from using my extremely heavy typewriter to write articles for newspapers to using a tiny, light laptop to compose articles within WordPress for my own media outlet. There are some pros and cons to both sides of the coin – if you think changing a typewriter ribbon is obnoxious, try finding the right kind of printer ink! – but I feel so lucky to have had such a variety of experiences in my career. The little girl in the photo above never could have anticipated the methods with which she’d be creating stories to share with others as an adult – she just knew she’d be doing it no matter what the medium or setting.
Ha, I remember both of those things! Whiteout never seemed to quite match anything and the stain couldn’t be missed. And of course when you ran out of ink you didn’t have any handy, and that wasn’t something sold just anywhere either.