Resetting

A few days ago, I recognized that my camera had been encountering some strange glitchy behavior that I’d never seen before. I immediately went into the camera’s settings, found the ‘Factory Reset’ button, and wiped everything clean.

I then noticed that my iPad, for the first time in a few years, had been acting strange as well. I made a mental note to wipe the device whenever I got home and give the device a clean install of iOS to see if that helped my problems.

You see, I love the feeling of wiping a device clean. It’s the same feeling I get every year when I get a new iPhone, and decide to ‘start fresh’ instead of restoring from backup. It makes the piece of technology in front of my feel newly charged, ready to be used in a way that it hadn’t before, yet I know others who would never reset their devices unless they had to, taking drastic measures (or dealing with horrible bugs) in an effort to never lose a bit of data or be forced to re-flip a toggle.

I’m of the opinion that our devices are meant to be used, not as precious obelisks which must remain untouched and unscratched, but tossed around, banged up, and occasionally wiped clean.

Feeling able to do so means that the things which may have been hindering you are long gone. The next day after I reset my camera and my iPad, I got up and shot more with my camera than I had in a long while. I then proceeded to use my iPad in new ways I hadn’t considered in months, downloading apps I had totally forgotten about or might have otherwise never come across.

This is the beauty of the hard reset — and it doesn’t just work for devices. Moving to a new state has given me the same feeling for my life as a whole. Sometimes there’s nothing to do besides restart, in a way, and go from there.