When Tech Lets You Down — Trust & Frustration

I’m sitting in my office with my dog Conrod curled up by my feet, fresh from a minor battle with my washing machine. For a good fifteen minutes, it flat-out refused to spin because the load was “unbalanced.” It’s never done this before. I fiddled, I shuffled clothes around, I cussed at it under my breath.

In the end, I stepped back, took a breath, and realised — it wasn’t the machine’s fault. I’d chucked in a pillow protector at the last minute, and that tiny extra lump was enough to throw the whole thing off. The machine was just doing the best it could with the weight I’d given it.

This feels exactly like the tech I grew up with.

Back when I was a kid, tech was slow, and honestly, we didn’t even have a computer in the house until I was about ten. I didn’t get my first phone until I was sixteen, and it was one of those original bricks — the old Nokia 3210. Indestructible, sure, but not exactly smart. Most of us back then had phones that were at least five or six years old — nobody my age had the newest gadget. That didn’t really kick off until the early 2010s.

We were all running on the bare minimum back then — old processors, tiny RAM, dial-up internet that squealed at you if someone picked up the landline. You’d click something, then wait. And wait. And wait some more, staring at that spinning hourglass or watching a loading bar crawl across the screen like a snail on holiday. It could take five minutes just to open one program — now we get cranky if our phone takes five seconds.

Me and patience? We’ve never really clicked — especially with my ADHD in the mix. If you want me to stand in line for more than five minutes, good luck. That’s why I’m the one booking the first doctor’s appointment of the day — less chance of waiting, less chance of me pacing circles in the lobby. Since my disability, sitting or standing for too long has only got trickier — but give me a path to walk and I’ll wander for hours. It’s the staying still that does me in, not the distance.

So when tech drags its feet, old or new — it pokes right at that same nerve: Patience. But somewhere along the way — probably around the time computers went from squealing dial-up to streaming entire movies in seconds — I realised something: the machine is doing the best it can with what it’s got. Sometimes it’s old. Sometimes the software’s outdated. Sometimes I’m asking too much of it — like that poor washing machine stuck spinning my lumpy pillowcase.

Blaming the machine, or myself for “doing it wrong” — never fixes the moment. What does help is stepping back, taking a breath, and remembering: sometimes it just needs time. Sometimes I just need to calm down and let it catch up.

I’m not saying don’t upgrade your gear when you need to — or don’t expect good service from your tech. But the reality is, frustration usually doesn’t come from the machine alone. It comes from that feeling underneath: I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to feel out of control and I want it now.

And that part is mine to sit with — not the machine’s to solve.

So next time your laptop freezes or your washing machine throws a tantrum, try this: take a breath. Walk away for a moment if you can. Remember the tech is just working with what it’s got — just like we all are. Sometimes it just needs a moment to rebalance. Sometimes so do we.

Machines aren’t magic. They can’t fix our patience. That’s our job — to breathe, adjust, and trust that waiting isn’t always wasted time. Sometimes it’s where we figure ourselves out.