Hi, I'm Tim and I'm a MS Office addict…

… in recovery. I’ve been Office-free for 4 days now… 2 weekend days, and 2 work days. I’m seeing things like I’ve never seen them before… here’s my story.

I wasn’t sure I had the strength to do it… I mean, I’d tried it before, on a couple of occasions. The first time, I installed NeoOffice and launched it… once. Then someone sent me a Word Document as an email attachment. My mail client knows what I like… it’s an enabler. It launched Word immediately. I didn’t think anything about it… just slid back into old habits.

Then came Google Docs… I thought, for sure, I had found my way back out. A PowerPoint from a presentation I attended at NECC served as my next foil. Off the wagon I rolled…

I thought I was hopeless… destined to a life chained to endless, expensive upgrades. I began to just accept my lot in life as another poor sap who would never escape the grips of proprietary office suite. I began to accept the talk of “industry standard.” I was an Office user without a way out.

Something happened…

I can’t really point to the moment at which I realized that I don’t need to live this way anymore… can’t identify the specific epiphany that provided the motivation to give it another shot. Perhaps it was a colleague of mine who tirelessly preaches the gospel of open source… perhaps it was just some hidden, deeper meaning in life that needed time to blossom… whatever it was, I picked myself up, looked myself in the mirror, recited an Oprah-like “You Can Do It!” and tried again.

This time, the only way was to go “cold turkey.” I re-installed Neo, and then did the unthinkable. I un-installed Office… yep, you read that right…

So, here I am today… breathing deeper… smiling wider… for some reason the sun seems to shine a bit brighter. I’ve even been able to keep up my productivity. The road ahead is long… I’ll keep you posted.