Question: For the past several weeks, I’ve been having nightmares about my phone acting crazy. Should I see a shrink or an exorcist?

Answer:
I would try to enjoy these nightmares for their colorful and bizarre content, and not worry too much. These are anxiety dreams, which are more typically expressed as “examination dreams” where you’re suddenly back in high school taking that old trigonometry exam all over again – while naked. Anxiety is normal, and is your brain’s way of working things out.

Tech writers in particular are worried today about staying current with new tools and technologies, which change every 3 months or so. Yeah, your expertise still exists, but nobody cares about what you can do unless you can do it using the tools they want you to use.

What we are really afraid of is the loss of permanence. It’s only natural to see this expressed through fear of strange new gadgets that know everything about you, but which mysteriously malfunction at crucial moments. Very often, this is how they operate in waking life as well, so it’s not much of a stretch.

Additionally, job-seekers are told that no one wants to hire old people because they’re expensive, opinionated, and slow to adopt. Learn to say things like “Sure, let’s Slackchat a calendar invite on my new Fitbit” even if you have no idea what that actually means.

A lot of new technology really is capricious, especially trackpads. It drives everyone crazy but they’re used to it and just work around it. So if you don’t get their calendar invite, blame your “cloud synch” and just call back. If they really want to talk to you, eventually they will.