I type everything in Word.

Somehow things always flow better in Word. And there’s the helpful squiggly red and green underline thingies when you type something wrong, or when the paperclip decides that you didn’t pass third grade English class.

Anyhow, it’s a holdover from college. Do you always format your screen to "print layout," because it looks more like the actual page you’d be writing on if you were writing with a pen?* I can’t do the normal—I’d never know how many more pages to go until the "5-7 pages minimum length" was almost reached. The web layout? Really? And the outline version? Never used it once. I freak out if I accidentally twitch my wrist and select that one without realizing it. GET IT BACK, MAN! GET IT BACK!

(Also, hate the Reading layout. I can’t be bothered to move my eyes all over the screen. Must scroll as I read, with my eyes glued to the top half of the screen.)

My boss recently made me compose some new text for our website in Notepad. And then he said, "Well, you’ll probably be more comfortable writing in Word." And I was all, bitch, watch my work my mad Notepad skills! I can even put in the funny html tags that make hyperlinks and stuff!

Except I can’t, not really, and now I’m stuck with a bunch of .txt files that all tell me that my formatting will be lost if I don’t save it a in certain way, that is, with my thumb pressed to the top of my nose while dancing a jig. These formats, they are out to take my life or my dignity, whichever.

*I only just now realized the irony of this.

And to all the Microsoft haters out there, to ye I say unto you, get over it. Word works for me, works for the simple needs I have, and quickly responds to the emergency "shift F7" thesaurus-summoning. All I want to do is get my words down on the page, with perhaps a little column action, or some page breaks.

(Digression: Why does no one utilize the page breaks? Why do they insist on enterenterenterenterentering until they reach the bottom? Do they not realize that one more character inserted at just the right spot will screw up all their careful entering? And once you learn what the funky backwards P up there in the toolbar is, your formatting woes will be overcome, and this I say unto you. Soothly.)

Perhaps there may come a day when I am forced to learn a new program, when my sweet old graduate-school laptop decides to visit her undergraduate Gateway desktop sister in the sky. I do not want to learn new tricks. I can tolerate small incremental change, even welcome it, but major, all in-your-face change, I cannot handle it. There will be sulking on the day that I have to change computers and change my technological habits. I’m trying to delay this day for as long as possible, and this is why I freak out, honey, when you touch my computer with anything harsher than a feather, or when you spill beer on my keyboard. Ahem.

Word.