In high school, I was given a school laptop. I saved up from my first job and bought a fairly cheap printer from the Post Office on the corner of the main street. The ink almost cost more than the printer. It was a humble little HP that printed only on one side of the paper.

I ended up getting a second laptop, also from the Op Shop, that was a square brick. It ran The Sims 2 and the Microsoft Office Suite that I also found on disc at the same Op Shop (don’t remember the year but it was back when it was cheaper to buy the disc outright than how much they charge a yearly subscription now). Despite the laptop being bulky and needing to stay on charge, it played games and had that great retro feel that I yearned for as a kid. In hindsight, I think the main reason is the bulky buttons that give that satisfying click. Old phones and computers were my favourite item to find in a garage full of “junk” the adults didn’t want. It’s also how I got my first (and only, in this economy) typewriter.

Before I got this second laptop, all of my stories existed on a USB stick. I didn’t leave them on the main computer and I didn’t leave them on my school laptop because I didn’t want anyone finding them. I think I still have the USB I used to use. It’s white with a green slide cap. That was back in the day where you were also only carrying a USB stick with about 250mb.

I ended up buying another laptop to use for school in my senior years, something that could do a combination of my school laptop and the brick laptop. It was also because my computer was the only one running The Sims 2 and everyone in the house also wanted to play it. I gave that computer to my sister before getting a smaller one in university (timeline is a bit blurry but my sister still has that laptop and we’re pretty sure it should have died by now).

Writing became faster and the worlds exploded into life in the form of word documents crammed with notes and scenes, spreadsheets tracking all of the characters and PowerPoints breaking down whatever worked on a slide. I tried using OneNote at various points throughout these years but could never get it to work for me. Despite it having many functions that are useful to how I work, I hated using it for some reason. At first I’m pretty sure it was because there was no set formatting (where you started often changed) and I always needed to resize the typing window. It’s a bunch of little things that I could probably compromise on or figure out the settings for now but as a kid I just thought it was frustratingly inconsistent and style inconsistencies meant I didn’t want to touch it. Such a weird beef I had with OneNote, but I still don’t use it.

I learnt a bodge way to build databases in Access so that I could build character databases. Basically I took what I think was supposed to be a student database and turned it into a searchable wiki for characters. It made compiling and finding character information so much easier for me. Before this, I would just build tables with “first name, surname, age, eyes, hair, skin” and that was it. Making the database made creating new entries/profiles a lot more fun and easier and I started expanding to “physical description, parents, siblings, children, hometown, current location, occupation” etc. I love filling out forms and so this made it enjoyable (ᵕ—ᴗ—). I’ve tried to replicate this throughout the years as I lost access to … Access, but I’ve been unsuccessful. Character profiles are now either brief character descriptions stuck in a document or long winded profile tables also in a word doc.

As soon as turned eighteen, I moved to Brisbane to live with my older sister, as a way to get out of the situation I was in and also go to university. I took boxes of books and notes with me. Paper and clothing was almost all I owned when I moved. Now I own a lot more paper but I also have a substantial amount of trinkets and craft supplies.

In my early twenties I got my first desktop PC.