My relationship with computers
I have always been considered good with computers, but this is far from the truth. Really, I'm only good at looking up solutions and trial-and-error guesswork. Whenever someone has computer trouble, I'm the one to call. Likewise, I always carried in any computer science class. I'm not exactly a "computer guy" however.
I don't know anything about hardware (I've been using the same dirty HP laptop for a while), and I don't know anything about programming besides fundamentals. I can enumerate meaningless words like Ruby, Haskell, and Rust. Really, tech literacy isn't about naming languagues and tech stacks and operating systems. I am comparable to an "HTML programmer."
I'm not skilled anywhere tech-related, so what? I want to be a computer guy, but I'm nothing like one. I do like computers and especially programs I use once and forget about. I've tried my hand at anything free: Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Krita, and GIMP to name a few. But the truth is that I really don't have a lot of use for tech. The applications I use most are Qutebrowser, SumatraPDF, and MS Notepad (where I'm typing this right now). Allow me to explain.
I've been browser hunting since the time I bought my laptop, and I've sporadically switched between a lot of them. For the longest time I used Brave, then Ungoogled Chromium, then Firefox, then Firefox alternatives, and now Qutebrowser. I'm also fond of NetSurf which is the most minimal browser I've encountered, but it's utterly useless for most websites (although it works perfectly on this one). There's not much I want in a browser, but there is a lot that I don't want.
I don't need a built-in crypto wallet or customizable themes or a "gaming browser." Just load the web page and leave me alone. 99% of the time, I don't need anything else. I'm a minimal person looking for a minimal browser. The more I want, the less I'll have. I prefer to be bored and limited because that's when I work best.
I'm not a computer guy, but I am a book guy. I collect a lot of PDFs, and I spend a lot of time reading in general. I've made the switch to SumatraPDF. You couldn't ask me what features it has -- I don't know or care. It does what I want, has a minimal design, and it's not bloated with useless garbage. All I want to do is read, watch what I like, and write. I couldn't ask for anything else.
I've tried note-taking on a few applications. I used LibreOffice Writer for a long time, and I even tried out Obsidian. But something is wrong about both of them. Obsidian is always touted as this productivity tool, but I'm actually less productive with it. I think it's one sad LARP where I pretend to be a scholar expanding my "knowledge web." LibreOffice is okay, but I feel like these apps impose a kind of expectation on me, like I'm supposed to be this writer typing away at a new literary masterpiece.
What then am I supposed to use? It soon hit me: just write in plain text documents. It's as easy as making a new folder to store simple .txt goodness. It's more orderly, minimalist, and resource inexpensive than anything else I've used. I changed a few settings on Notepad (dark mode, text font/size, open in new window), and it works as good as anything else. I never have the window fullscreen, and I usually have it sitting in the middle of my desktop with enough margin to make paragraphs readable.
As for the productivity, it's like a weight has been lifted from me. Notepad doesn't care what you write, Notepad isn't pretentious, Notepad is a totally chill dude. Using such a lowly application is liberating in a way. You don't give a fuck and neither does Notepad. You're going to write, and it'll go along with every spelling mistake or random tangent or awkward phrasing you make.
So now I ask myself: do I really want to be a computer guy? I think the answer is negative. I'm not looking for blazingly fast browsers with crazy features or clamoring about "productivity tools" anymore. I can rest and do what I like most: reading and writing.