Don Draper carries a wad of cash in his pocket, and that’s it. No wallet, no phone, certainly no laptop case with forty dongles in it.
My shoulders are ruined. Carrying a backpack with my laptop and lunch in it for a few minutes causes me real pain. I specifically buy backpacks with waist straps, even though I prefer messenger bags, so that I can distribute the weight to both shoulders and my hips. I have to carry my laptop every day for school, so there’s not really any way around it.
The total stuff I carry pretty much every time I leave the house is this:
- Backpack
- MacBook pro
- Charger for Mac
- Book or Kindle
- Lunch
- A bunch of pens
- VGA adapter
- USB key
- Spare batteries for my hearing aid
- Wallet
- Whatever junk I forgot to take out of my backpack last time
- A sweater or jacket
- Headphones
- Keys
It weighs like 10 lb. and I resent all of it.
Even when I specifically try to travel light, I end up with my phone, wallet, and a book. I dont think I’m a packrat – every single item in my kit is in frequent use throughout the day (except the extra junk I forgot to take out), and I would miss any item I forgot at home.
Don Draper gets by just fine, though. He can do it because he always eats out, isn’t required to carry ID, has people call the restaurant he’s at (or just deal with not being able to find him) and computers don’t exist yet.
How can I do it?
I want to type in the air on a virtual keyboard that’s only visible to me, pay for things and get into my house/car with my private RSA key for authentication, broadcast the images on my device to a larger screen with a gesture, and have my library available by saying “Library”. I want the computer that handles all this stuff to be as small as Don Draper’s wad of cash, and its inputs and output visible only to me unless I specify otherwise.
I am very impatient. Get on with it, please.