Why I do this

I grew up in a home without much money. My mother cared for elderly people in our home, so I was around them almost every day. I got to know them. Many passed while spending time with my family. That was my first job, in a way.

 

My father taught me the financial side of life — paying a car loan, budgeting for the bills, keeping a check register by hand. That's the technology that came before me, and many of my clients still use it today.

 

When our first computer broke, nobody was coming to repair it, so I took it apart to find out what was wrong. That's how I learned. It's been with me ever since: through the military, college, a lot of travel, and everything else in life.

 

Every job I ever had, people came to me with their computer questions. Older folks especially. I was told over and over that I was easy to talk to. Eventually I built a business around it.

 

Someone calls because the computer is slow, or the printer stopped, or they can't get into their email. I fix that. But then we find the photographs. The letters. The videos of a husband who died four years ago. Things they'd given up on.

 

I've watched people cry at their own kitchen table because a folder opened.

 

You can drop a laptop at a counter and get it back working. What you can't get is somebody patient, sitting next to you, who will explain what happened in plain English and stay until it makes sense. What's on that machine isn't data. It's a life.