The great laptop upgrade caper

I can’t do this anymore. By “this,” I mean that I simply can no longer stand to fight with the eight-year-old toddler that is my current 2012 Toshiba laptop. This computer will be the death of me.

I don’t have anger issues–I have a therapist, I have a psychiatrist, I take antidepressants–but I’ve sworn at this computer so many times for stalling, hanging and crashing over the past three years that it’s ridiculous, and tonight, I punched the monitor so hard that I cracked the LCD screen. And if I didn’t have important memories of my damn mom on the hard drive, I would have followed it up by pouring a full liter of pop on the keyboard. I’m that fed up with my one co-worker.

I’ve asked for a lot of help over the years, and I was going to hold off on this one, but I have to ask for help, not just being able to pay the bills, but also in attempting to raise funds for a new coworker, a new stalwart, a newer laptop.

It doesn’t have to be perfect (my perfect laptop costs over $2,400). It doesn’t even have to be new (it can be refurbished). But I need something that doesn’t have scorch marks on its keyboard from my hands, isn’t working on its second keyboard (the first one broke) and isn’t dented and dinged from years of travel and plain old overuse.

I want to make this blog work. I want to get a podcast going. I want to be in this for the long haul. But I can’t do any of that without a reliable, modern-ish computer that won’t throw hissy fits when it doesn’t get its way.

How we get from here to “new laptop” is beyond me. I’m looking for advice as to what kinds of Windows laptops work best if you’re grinding out a 12-to-14-hour day, I’m looking for advice as to how to focus a fundraising effort (Gofundme? Paypal? Giftly? Venmo? I use Paypal for my bank…), I’m looking for moral support…

A year and six days after my mom died, overcome with emotion, I lashed out at the one thing I can’t not have access to to do my job, and now I feel incredibly frustrated, incredibly overwhelmed, and angry at myself.

I want to build a viable blog, one that will pay the bills and allow me to invest some of that damn money into my readers, too, but I can’t do it long-term with inferior hardware. And that’s what I’ve got.

My laptop is limping along like my 2006 Chrysler Pacifica was last week–with its muffler and tailpipe dragging on the pavement.

Aunt Annie was able to charge that $600 repair for the present moment. But this laptop is going to cost a lot more to replace, and I can’t afford a new one on my own. So I need to ask for help.

And, by the way, does anybody know how to repair a laptop monitor? I replaced a broken keyboard by myself, so replacing a LCD screen can’t be that much more difficult…

Did I mention that my phone’s old, too? 😉