No hope for keeping up

Once upon a time, I was so smart. I knew everything about everything. But the older I get, the more I don't know.

And there's nowhere that is more true than in keeping up with changing technology.

With a dad who is a gadget-loving engineer, I was once on the cutting edge of technology. As a child, I even knew about mainframe computers and punchcards. I also remember my dad trading in his slide-rule for a calculator. In middle school, I knew DOS and could amaze my friends with what I knew about computers. We had a TI-80 at home and a Commodore 64 at school. At another school, we had an Apple computer, and I remember when we got our first Windows PC at home, with its copied features of the Apple OS. I became an expert at Windows Explorer and MS-DOS. And I watched floppy drives become smaller and not-so-floppy.

For a few years in my early 20s, I worked at Circuit City, and then Radio Shack. I got more training there and more exposure to changing technology: EBBs and email. Scanners and printers. Zip drives and CD-ROM drives. In college, as a graphic design student, I learned HTML and Photoshop 3.0 and PageMaker 5.0 and Illustrator 6.0 all on Apple desktops -- when they weren't popular.

I bought and used Apple computers at home and PCs at work (even still), so I was comfortable in both OSs. In my graphic design job, I learned to use digital cameras (I was taught old school in college classes) and new versions of Adobe, but I began to really fall behind the curve with the demands of a full-time job and a family. And it seems I won't ever catch up.

So here I am now--between jobs--and spending most of my time on the computer: networking, posting resumes and applying for jobs. I've learned a lot in the last 6 weeks about social media and blogs and mini apps, and just what has been going on in the world while I've been in the vortex created by my last job of 2 years, where I mostly used MS Office, and had little time or need for new technologies. 

All I can say is "Wow!" I've still got a lot to learn.