Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.

I know this because I was running Final Cut Pro X on a 2006 Core 2 Duo iMac with 3GB RAM and 120GB of spinning rust. I was nine. I had no business doing this. I did it every day after school until my parents made me go to bed.

“This Is Not The Computer For You” · Sam Henri Gold

This hit me deep. It made me wonder if, by researching a lot and getting the best, be it for myself or my family, I am not catering to obsession. I am catering to consumerism.

I have fond memories of hitting computer limits as well. I have even fonder memories of trying different ways to get around them.

A Chromebook doesn’t teach you that. A Chromebook’s ceiling is made of web browser, and the things you run into are not the edges of computing but the edges of a product category designed to save you from yourself. The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. Those are completely different lessons.

These lines serve the purpose if you narrowly accept the constraints of computing. Obsession truly would not care that it were a Chromebook and would figure out a path to edit video another way.

That said, the ĂŒber point remains. It’s always about what you want to do, and there’s wonder to be found and stories to be made even when computing hits its limits. This was a wonderful reminder.