My router is dying a slow and painful death. I need to put it out of its misery.

We want things to just work and just last forever. I need to let go, surrender, accept the fate of the future of the wild router kingdom.

I don’t really believe those indicators on the toothbrush that you need to replace the brushes. I think it’s just a ploy to get me to buy them more often. Seriously, they are plastic bristles. Maybe they get a little bent, so what? They still scrub your teeth and spread toothpaste around, right? There’s not an indicator on a hair brush that we need a new one. OK, fine, they’re not electric, but there’s no warning that it’s old and no longer of use. Ploy? Scam? Conspiracy theory!?

I actually wish my router had one of those indicators. Rather than constantly unplugging and plugging it back in to see if it will live a little longer, maybe it’s on its deathbed and just wants to be let go, in peace to electronica heaven. But no, I try to keep it alive. I reset, I reboot, I let it cool down. Maybe I should upgrade the firmware? Would that be a like a heart transplant? Nah, probably more like a liver transplant. Might keep it going a little while longer, but maybe I should just let it expire.

I’m typing this offline (gasp!) as I’m letting my router breathe. Or maybe it’s not breathing, maybe I pulled the plug on its respirator and it’s gasping for a clean breath of oxygen. Or it sees the light at the end of the tunnel and is happy to no longer be churning away, downloading and uploading constantly. Bits and bites and information back and forth. Again and again, day after day, never a break, always on, always on demand.

I’m going to replace it next week. I’m becoming such a Mac guy that I’m going to splurge and get the Time Machine. I just think/hope it will work better and be more reliable. I read reviews that you can’t tinker with it as much as other brands. I’m beyond tinkering with electronics. I think that was my 30’s. I’m beyond tinkering. I just want it to work and I want it to work for a long time and I don’t even want to tinker. In fact, I take that as a bonus that it’s not even possible to tinker so I won’t even be tempted—in a throwback to my wild and crazy tinkering 30’s.

I’m going to plug the router back in now, see if I can get a few more days out of it. Hey, it worked. I’ll be gentle these last few days and I’ll send it off into a wonderful reincarnation as something more exciting, like a Google car camera that takes photos of entire cities.