Aging My Way
OK. I admit it. I’ve always been a person who turns to an instruction manual only when everything else fails. I’m always sure I can figure out whatever contraption needs to be figured out without any help.
ometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, which is probably a good thing because it keeps my ego in check
But the world is changing too fast, and my stubbornness and impatience isn’t helping me stay caught up with its rapidly changing technology. I still, after years, don’t know how to use all the potential possibilities of my phone, and my new Fitbit has me even more befuddled.
What I would really like are good instruction manuals. Ones I can hold in my hands, and slowly peruse. Ones that explain things in logical order, instead of making me go from page two to page seven for complete instructions.
Finding such a manual these days, however, isn’t easy, particularly for technical gadgets like computers, phones or Fitbits. You have to go online, and you have to know the exact model of your gadget, and hopefully you have the latest update of it, to find instructions you may, or may not understand.
As for how-to videos, they usually leave me more confused than before, probably because they expect me to already have more tech knowledge than I do. Such videos put me back in the 1980s, when I bought my first computer and quickly discovered my six-year-old granddaughter knew more about how to operate it than I did.
Thank goodness I have another granddaughter living nearly. And she has a tech-savvy wife, too. Between the two of them, they keep my gadgets up and running. And they don’t bother me with all that tech gibberish of how such gadgets work because they’ve come to understand that my only real interest is which button to push to make it do what I want it to do.
So, who needs instruction manuals anyway? But it would be nice.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for the Story Circle Network Journal, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, wand these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
Pat Bean's blog 
the instruction manuals i see these days are useless. as you said, they assume you have more tech knowledge than someone our age would have. i have to have everything explained exactly where is that. as for your FitBit, I’ve been through at least a dozen smart watches/fitness watches and regardless the price (i’m a Vine member so get them from Amazon for the tax value) from $39,99 to the recently acquired $99.99 find they are all the same. Most use the VeryFit app–crazy because the watches vary so much in price and do exactly the same thing. FitBit, however, is apparently now being phased out. Yeah, i was really surprised too.