Digital property is a thing nowadays! Did you know? If you are a prolific and greedy creator of digital files, like me, some dispensation for the mountain of bits and bytes needs to be made in your last will and testament. So I hear. I had started writing my will, and everything was going swimmingly until I hit the digital property question. We will not regret the past? Right.
Yesterday I spent much of the day organizing and transferring my many thousands of electronic documents to two external hard drives. It quickly became apparent that I need more storage. I need another device just to hold my photos, something that can be mailed to one of my siblings, as if they would ever care about my photos of Tucson. I need another device to hold my scanned and photographed artwork, which I would mail to the hapless soul who has agreed to be my digital property executor, my kind friend in Phoenix who doesn’t really know what she signed up for.
I need to sort through all this crap. This is overwhelming. It’s bad enough I took a billion photos, bad enough I made all this art and then had the temerity to think it might be worth documenting so I scanned and photographed every stupid painting and drawing before I threw them all in the trash. What have I learned? This lunacy is the opposite of humility.
There’s possibly not a moment to waste.
This week I invited a housecall doctor from my insurance company to enter the Bat Cave. I can hear you yelling, Carol, what the hell? I know. I was aware of the risks. However, I was also aware of the benefits. I saw firsthand how beneficial having another opinion was for my mother. I sat in on her housecall sessions. I credit those nurses with keeping her independent in her condo much longer than we would have expected. They suggested eliminating several drugs and adding a memory drug, which I think slowed the progression of her dementia.
Having a second set of eyes on me, even if those eyes represent the insurance company, is not a bad thing, especially given my not totally unfounded feeling that my primary care nurse-practitioner person doesn’t have time for me and my tiny health crises. Osteoporosis is not a health crisis until I fall and break a bone. Vertigo is not a real thing if the healthcare provider can’t see it to measure it. It’s a well-known phenomenon that people who complain of health issues that can’t be measured are assumed to be insane. I’m lucky my skin is white. It could be so much more fraught.
Anyway, the insurance company makes housecalls once a year for free. The appointment was for 9:00 a.m. He was late. At 9:20 he called and apologized and said he could be there at noon, if I could meet then. I said sure. At noon he called and said it would be closer to 1:00 p.m. I said fine, call me if you get lost.
At 1:20 p.m., there was a knock on my door. I opened the door to a real live M.D., a big, blonde-haired, teddy bear-shaped guy wearing pale blue scrubs, a surgical mask, purple gloves, and an ID card around his neck. I offered him a choice of chairs: Captain Eddie’s office chair on wheels or my grandmother’s straight-backed sewing chair with a pillow to hide the frayed seat fabric. He chose my grandmother’s chair, after lifting the pillow, probably to see if it was okay to sit on it. I watched him lift the pillow. With masks on, so much nuance is lost in nonverbal communication, but we muddle along.
Actually, not much muddling happened. He was completely professional, friendly, not overly chatty but interested and patient. He asked questions, I answered them truthfully. I had done my homework. I could tell him the dates of my vaccines, my shingles shots, my latest mammogram, my most recent flu shot . . . all the dates and major events. There were a few things he didn’t bring up and a few things I didn’t mention. Then he took my blood pressure and listened to my heart.
“You have a little bit of a heart murmur,” he said. No one had told me that before, but given that my father had some sort of heart defect, which probably precipitated the heart attack that killed him, I wasn’t totally surprised.
“It’s a small one, a 2 on a 6-point scale,” he said. Oh, I thought, only a two. Whew.
“And your blood pressure is very high. Do you have white coat syndrome?”
I was actually feeling pretty happy that he hadn't asked me to pee in a cup. I don’t pee on command very well these days. I am not aware that I’m twitchy around doctors but who knows. Like I said, my parts aren’t really conversing.
So you see my urgency at getting my digital property squared away, right? I could be nearing the end. Odds are, it won’t be soon, but you never know. My cousin Dave ended up on the roof at age 61.
I don’t have to engage in proper file management. I could just say eff-it and let someone else deal with the mess. Certainly, if I lollygag long enough, I won’t have to worry about anything. I just hope someone finds my dead body before I totally stink up the place. Although, here in the desert, we have a dry heat, which means I’ll probably be a pile of bone and desiccated fat cells by the time the landlord unlocks the door. Ew.
For some reason, I have a lot of anxiety over leaving a mess, to the point at which I find myself regretting my creative life. If I had a partner or lived near family, I could say, oops, sorry, and let go. But I’m alone here. Who will come into the Bat Cave and sort through my stuff? Who will box up my hard drives, my laptop, my cell phone, and mail them to my family? Who will recycle-bin the gazillion photos from my gigantic solid state desktop-system hard drive? What crew of elves will erase the physical evidence of my presence on the planet? Who will hire said elves? There's no 1-800-LF4-HIRE. I checked. (Although, hey, you can work as an elf at the North Pole for minimum wage.)
It’s not something I would want to dump on anyone, let alone someone I love. My family cannot afford to fly down here to take on the task, especially during COVID. My scant handful of Arizona friends might be able to help in their free time, but they are all busy leading rich lives filled with meaning and purpose. I admit, I made a mess. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Who will clean it up when I’m gone? I need to figure it out before I die.
Anyhoo, I sent a message to my primary on Friday. If I don’t hear back within a few days, I’ll see if I can find another practitioner in the healthcare system who is taking new patients. Meanwhile, I’m sorting through the files. I may decide to chuck it all. It’s either all precious, or none of it is precious. In a few years, I bet nobody will be using a USB external hard drive. They will probably have computer chips implanted in their brains and operate their Netflix via a skin-based control panel, like a modern Dick Tracy. Either technology will have moved on, or the death of democracy and the environment will have rendered civilization unviable. We are a blip.
