Mystery of the Moved Monitors

Posted on August 7, 2009 in Anxiety

Two weeks ago, the monitor for my computer in the office just fizzled. I came in and there was nothing but blackness on the screen. The void was before me. Death came in a glass and plastic box. So having three such computers, I stole the monitor from the one which was least used and connected it to my preferred spot. I lined up all the speakers and the webcam on the top, then kept on blogging and tweeting.

Yesterday morning, the void returned. More literally than you would expect. The same blackness was there. I screamed at this second burnout. Then I tried the monitor on the computer from which I had seized last go round and it worked. A closer inspection of the monitor on my main computer showed that it was the one I had moved before — same model, with the same decals, same wax markings where I had glued little Buddha statues. In other words, the dead monitor had found its way back.

I called Lynn, asked her if she had switched the monitors. We argued for several minutes about whether or not this had really happened. It was hard for me to keep my temper because I felt tired. “You have to understand that this is the kind of thing that triggers my paranoid impulses,” I said. “We’ve got to get to the truth here.”

Then I considered somnambulism, better known as [[sleepwalking]] as the explanation. If this is the reason for it, I am quite impressed at the way I got both monitors properly connected and everything back in its place.

Sleepwalking is not literally walking in your sleep. What happens is that you are awake, but not completely. Whatever you do, you won’t remember. My endrocrinologist — who assured me that it was highly unlikely that someone was coming into my house just to switch the monitors ((Twitter politics can get to be such that some begin making threats and stalking others. Still others believe this is happening in the absence of hard evidence. This is kind of a joke with me, but in the days before my diagnosis and proper treatment, I was amenable to such explanations.)) — told me about a patient of hers who dutifully made her lunch every evening only to find in the morning that she had eaten it. A fellow Tweeter said that she sometimes woke to find herself standing over the sink with a half-finished drink in her hand. People eat, drink, clean, drive cars, shoplift, and do all kinds of things when they are in this state. So could I have moved the monitors? It appears that I did.

The secret agent operating against me is me. Why can’t I get myself to do the cleaning?