Replacing: Self

With a click, I erased half of my memories. There was nothing else to do but wait.

My 2019 MacBook Pro, scuffs and all, has been my trusty sidekick since the first day of high school. She has seen a dozen states, from Minnesota to California. She has stood by my side through six years of late-night essay writing sessions, online games with friends, and countless moments of excitement, mundanity, and hard work.

Still, she grew old and tired, with a 75-minute battery life and a fan loud enough to drown out any video when I had more than two tabs open. Though it hurt to admit, I knew it was time to lay her to rest.

And so the search began for a new companion: a workhorse who would stay with me through two more years of computer science courses; who was chic enough to drop into any purse; who was reliable enough not to crack under pressure. Several Reddit threads, YouTube reviews, and hours spent weighing specs later, my new partner-in-crime was due for arrival.

The moment I picked her up from the Quincy Mail Room, I ripped open the box with impunity and impatience.

But the minute I booted her up, she asked me an impossible question: What do you want to bring with you?

Apple’s Migration Assistant, in all its sterile productivity, offered two options: transfer everything, or choose what matters. Though I wanted to bring it all with me, my storage had been 95% full for months, and it showed. Soon enough, I found myself sorting through the digital debris of a former life.

I filtered through 30 gigabytes of high school debate files — a hundred or so downloaded articles about lethal autonomous weapons, another few dozen about universal basic income, a smattering of case studies about compulsory voting.

I couldn’t help but remember how these files had, at some point, been the intellectual core of my life: 16-year-old me could have quoted these articles by memory, but now they were just props in hazy dreams I knew I would never revisit. Delete.

A folder of cringey Tumblr memes from 2019? Keep. Some still made me laugh.

Ticket receipts of concerts long past? Delete — mostly. That’s what pictures were for anyway, though I kept the Olivia Rodrigo “Guts” tour tickets I fought tooth and nail for on Ticketmaster.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that deleting files betrayed a past version of myself. To the 15-year-old me who had just downloaded 25 gigabytes of a TV show I then became obsessed with for three months, or the Covid-era me who got a little too into making EDM tracks, or the once-aspiring politician me with a million unsuccessful class campaign videos.

Dread crept in as I chose what to keep and what to delete, mourning a million different versions of myself I never became.

Still, they were clogging up my storage. I clicked “Transfer,” watching as the migration bar slowly ticked forward — three hours, then two, then one.

I had no laptop to use during that window of idleness. Nothing to click. No assignments to finish. No emails to pretend I’d respond to.

That, more than anything, was the hard part. Like most Harvard students, I pride myself on my productivity. I bring my laptop everywhere: to lecture, to the dining hall, and admittedly to more than a few Friday night parties when I had an assignment due at 11:59 p.m.

Before I had even thought about it, I had destined myself to ennui. I was laptopless and, by extension, purposeless. For a whole 180 minutes, all I could do was sit and think and watch.

I realized I hadn’t taken a good, hard look at my laptop for a while. She admittedly showed all the signs of a laptop well-loved: black pleather peeling off the edges, oily chip stains on the keyboard, a multi-language button that would get triggered at random times.

But it was my stickers I mourned most. Over the last six years, I’d curated the version of myself I wanted to present to the world. House pride oozed out of my Keith Haring-inspired Quincy penguins. I paid homage to my intellectual sanctuary through a sticker of the research center I used to work at. An R package logo from STAT 100 trivia night constantly reminded me of the trials and tribulations of freshman year and everything I had learned since then.

My old laptop was a gallery that I’d be proud for anyone to see. It was quirky enough for my section crush to hopefully comment on, intellectual enough to impress my professors, classy enough to live out my coffee-shop-working dreams.

Now, the silver sheen of my new laptop made me feel anonymous — invisible, even. If I couldn’t shout my virtues to anyone who came upon me, did I stand for anything at all?

Wallowing in antsiness and self-pity, I realized that the migration bar had reached its inevitable end. While I hoped I could jump back into essay writing the second the screen glowed again, I realized I didn’t want to. For the first time in half a decade, I had 350 gigabytes and a working fan at my disposal.

I changed my desktop background — something I had never done before. I added new widgets to my screen and reorganized my bookmarks to the websites I frequented as someone now in her 20s.

At once, I realized this change was the push I needed to clear space for the self I was becoming. To make room for another five years of bad articles, unfinished play drafts, and whatever new hobby comes into my life next. My laptop stopped looking like a barren void and started feeling like a blank canvas.

We still need to go through thick and thin together. I still haven’t gotten comfortable enough to toss her on my bed after a long day or precariously prop her on cardboard boxes for late-night movie viewings. I know that eventually, I’ll treat this one just as roughly as I did my last; she’ll collect scuffs and crumbs and will one day be stowed away for an even shinier, post-grad version.

But for now, I’m just excited to have a new friend to go through life with. She’ll see dozens more hyper-specifically named Spotify playlists, 3 a.m. tears, and every new sticker I’ll collect from the clubs, hobbies, and interests I have yet to discover. I can’t wait for her to see the new me I get to make — and this progress bar has already started.