Around this time five years ago, I was most likely sitting in a grungy, dimly-lit office, punching holes in paper, fighting with the printer(s) all day long, and questioning my entire existence. 

I worked at Accurpress, Inc. — a manufacturing plant for hydraulic shears. 

Not the most glamorous of industries. 

Accurpress needed someone to complete office administration tasks and ship parts orders. I needed a job that was close to school and would work with my schedule. It was a match made in heaven.

While my time there was filled with various ups and downs, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the lowest of the lows was whenever I had to do anything that had to do with a printer. 

We had three in the office (and one in the shop), and they were all for different tasks. Sometimes they completed those various tasks, and most of the time they just didn’t. And, in the process, they created more tasks for me to complete instead. 

One printer would decide at random to not print shipping labels—which was the entire purpose of its existence. Actually, it wasn’t random. It would only do this whenever we were running behind and the UPS guy was already waiting impatiently for us at the door and I already wanted to melt into the floor. That was when it would choose to not print labels. 

And the other printer. It had a continual paper jam in some far-off quadrant that was completely unreachable by any normal human appendage. There were many an afternoon that I sat on that grime-and-metal-chip-covered floor and cried as I tried to un-jam it, but it wouldn’t cooperate no matter how much I pried. 

I also just remembered that we had a fax machine, too, that my grandpa would sometimes use as a separate printer whenever he didn’t feel like using one of the actual printers (or copiers) (or scanners).

And the other printer, once it really got fired up, made a noise akin to a witch being boiled in oil. I never quite got used to that one. 

Then there was this one time when one printer accidentally started printing a document that was close to 1,000 pages long. This also happened to be the one printer without an emergency shut-off valve (or whatever the equivalent would be in printer-speak). 

Our solution was to feed the same 10 pages through over and over until it had successfully printed everything it needed to print to get it fully out of its system. (That’s where the cover photo from this blog came from—I was documenting my work years ago without even knowing it.)

All this to say, printers are not my favorite. 

(Bonus example of how much printers and I do not coexist: my dad bought my mom a printer a few years ago that would probably qualify as a Nice Printer and for some unknown reason, my laptop has never been able to connect to it. For years I’ve been emailing documents to any other computer in the house because mine is the only one that’s not connected.)

With this context in mind, please understand that the following sentence is a true cause for joy and celebration.

TODAY AT WORK I CONNECTED MY LAPTOP TO THE PRINTER IN PROBABLY LESS THAN 30 SECONDS AND PRINTED THINGS OFF FOR A CLIENT THAT WAS IN TOWN AND SAVED THEM A TRIP UP THE STREET TO GO PRINT THINGS AT AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT OFFICE AND NOW I CAN PRINT WHATEVER I WANT BECAUSE MY COMPUTER IS CONNECTED ONCE AND FOR ALL.

I’m not being dramatic (read: I’m being very dramatic). This is a big deal. 

This client had a need. I saw that need and took charge with confidence — believing that I could solve their problem — even with my less than stellar history with printers.

Today was the day that I learned that your past truly doesn’t define your present.

You can be today who you want to be. Don’t stay in bondage to old printers of the past. 

Take charge, break free of the shackles of fear: fear of failure, fear of man, and fear of those strange, unearthly noises coming from the printer across the room.

Today is the day that you step up and connect those devices you’ve been putting off for too long. 

Today is the day to let go of the past and walk into the future.

Today is the day you are free.