the midway

until i got locked out of my own blog, akin to being barred from your house (freezing, hungry, key in hand but it doesn’t work, contemplating breaking a window) or your own needs and wants (what do I want? why don’t I know what I want?). The sensation is called tech rage but in a person like me (an elocution that could be shortened to “but for me”) I don’t feel rage as much as … forlornness. I’ve changed my apple id 3 times in recent weeks, my sign-on at the office every few months, and I sometimes can’t recall the answers to my own questions: what was my first car? My first dog? It’s a kind of identity theft but of our own doing — we try to gain entry, identifying ourselves to the best of our abilities, only to be blocked by an error message, increasingly dire as we try and try again. The screen shakes. Either the user name or password is incorrect, but “they” won’t tell you which one. And if you try too many times, you’re disallowed, sent into to some email process that takes 10 minutes to emerge from. Let me in.