Preemptive Retaliation

I have a new keyboard and it sounds so fucking sweeeeeet.

When I built my first PC I was determined to get a mechanical keyboard. I had never used a modern one before, but I knew that I didn’t want the soft squishy keyboards that I had been used to in laptops and student computers. I remember the thick, bakelite-like keyboards of my youth. The ones that thunked when you pressed each key, as if every letter was the starting action to some ancient machinery. Even outside of the old BBC computers of my school, the first home computer I had clacked and rattled, like it was still working on typewriter technology.

I even had a typewriter in my twenties. I picked it up at a second hand store one afternoon. A great big metal box from the seventies. Each key hit was an attack, a punch on the page. The metal arms were so stiff that I could never get a solid quite beat like I can with modern keyboards, but it was still music to my ears. I tried to emulate Jack Kerouac and started writing a story, stream of consciousness style, no paragraph breaks no page breaks, just reams of paper selotaped together. It was a story about a bunch of characters from different novels, failed novels, and they were fed up with their lot in life and made it their life’s purpose to kill me, the author. I haven’t thought about that story in a long time. I still have those reams of paper, coiled up into a tube, hidden in a folder snuggled between notebooks inside a cupboard I don’t go into. It was a bad story, even for a twetny-odd year old, but I still like it a lot.

I digress.

When I built my first computer I got a mechanical keyboard. I didn’t do much research. I scanned articles, I watched a few summary videos, and I came to the conclusion – I want this keyboard. It was an aluminium Corsair keyboard, with an 80% layout, and Cherry MX Switches. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, and I still don’t, but it was my keyboard and I loved it. I wrote three novels on it, dozens of short stories and countless blogs.

But I’ve always been intrigued by the subculture of mechanical keyboards. A collection of enthusiasts who enjoy the sound and finger feel of a keyboard, and who collect some of the most gorgeous looking things I have seen. Their pictures occasionally popped up in my algorithm, usually as part of a larger desk set up, and I’d nod and smile and go about my day. But there was always something that stuck with me. An envy. I wanted what they had. The colours, the beautiful casing, the soft clacking of the keys. If I had that, maybe things would work out for me. Maybe I would get everything I ever wanted.

I told myself that I would get a new keyboard when I finished my novel. As a treat to myself, a reward well done, and an incentive to start on the next project which is already slowly gestating in my mind. I ordered this little thing on a group buy thinking that it wouldn’t come until August. Yet here it is. It is a thing of beauty. It is soft and clacky, and it lights up, and it’s purple! There’s something nostalgic about purple peripherals.

I’m having fun with it. It’s so nice to listen to. It’s so pleasant. I can’t wait to write more with it.