leave it to my scumbag brain to experience some wind-in-the-face, inspirational-music eureka-moment type of shit when i’m the busiest. today, i innocently opened up wordpress.com and involuntary walked into an impending doom when i realized that the computer had signed me out of my account. *cue immediate panic in the atmosphere.* suddenly, i came to the unnerving realization that i didn’t know what my password was.

if you’re reading this, rest assured that i somehow was able to sign in to the account and managed to publish this superb entry … i’ll let you wonder what trick i pulled out of my knee-high socks (because fuck sleeves) to do that. feel free to blame the caffeine for this irrationally passionate entry about passwords.
anyway! in this day and age, the internet machine is the mother of all things and with it comes the necessity to register your information to attain an account on most websites and shit. doesn’t sound too bad right? not so fast. to complete said quest, you must submit to varying sets of rules, although similar in essence, that determine whether your password is acceptable or not. did i mention the word “varying”? because i really do mean it varies by how much each website wants to complicate your life …
well, i say those rules are shit! how many times have you not spent an unacceptable amount of time trying to choose a password? why do you think this is so complicated, you may ask. for starters, you actually have to remember said password, presumably forever. add that to the list of all the things i have to remember forever, as if it needs one more item. actually, not really forever because that website is a scumbag and in due time, it’ll flip you the bird by throwing a password-curveball at you. so … what?panic is right! and i’ll tell you why. an acceptable password has to contain a certain amount of characters; it must be not less than x number of characters, but not more than x number of characters. most websites i’ve seen start off with 6 or 8 as their minimum amount of characters. like, why do i need to make the password so fucking long? why can’t it be something short and easy to remember like “poop”? or “puppy”? no, because that’s not complicated enough for the internet machine!

websites have these sets of ridiculous rules that you must abide to as if they were part of the united states constitution. for instance, you may not use part of your name, your name in its entirety or any combination that relates to your name. basically anything you may have entered as information on the same application prior to the password is out of the question. it must include at least one number and one special character (i.e., !@#$%^). and to top that puppy off, your password must be a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, or must at least include one of each. not to mention, each of these rules could vary by website; so wave goodbye to using the same password for everything.
i’m talkin’ you better make a good uppercase-lowercase-number-symbol combination of a password if you want a fucking facebook profile. 
some websites don’t even let you use actual words that can be found in the dictionary. there’s a special place in hell for whoever it was that came up with that bright idea. please, tell me how i’m supposed to remember “ghtyYes21” or whatfuckingever other random combination of words and numbers i chose as a password. should i throw in some ancient egyptian hieroglyphics? because i for sure will remember those. for fuck’s sake, all i’m trying to do is pay my damn toll-road bill!
one of the biggest first world problems according to the national research foundation of bullshit (which i just came up with) is having different passwords for every fucking website you have a log in for. it’s impossible to remember all of them; even when i’ve put some decent effort into making most of them the same, at least similar or somehow related to one another. i’m sure i’m not the only one that has to remember passwords for accounts on yahoo, gmail, work gmail, facebook, tumblr, twitter, instagram, soundcloud, wordpress, nastygal.com, amazon, chegg, dropbox, itunes/app store, youtube, any .edu domains, southwest airlines, multiple bank apps and i’m sure the list goes on. how could i not be thrown into an anxious frenzy over this?! can you say #firstworldproblems?
lest we forget different passwords for my work computer and my personal computer! in fact, when i first started working at my current job, every single morning would be a fight trying to log on to my computer. our IT person would have to come to my cubicle and do it for me, after several times of me butchering my username and password at no avail. my work life depended on a torn piece of paper where my supervisor wrote my username and password once upon a time (a normal person would’ve probably memorized that soon after; oh no, honey, not me). until one day, i finally realized i had been typing in the password with one extra letter the entire time (by the way, that little piece of paper had been long-lost by then). add that to the ever-long list of moments of idiocy in valeria’s life.
i cannot tell you how many times i’ve changed my password for my best buy credit card account. for approximately 7 months, i changed my password every single time i had to make a payment because i just couldn’t remember what my god forsaken password was. even if you ask me now, i still have no idea what my current password is … and i made a payment two days ago. i think it’s safe to say the idea of having to make a payment to best buy gives me and anxiety attack almost every time.

god forbid my phone magically, or while on an evil plan of sorts, signs me out of my instagram account because there’s no way in hell i’m going to be able to sign in again because i do not remember my password whatso5ever. *more panic goes here*

there’s also that horrible moment when you’re forced to change your password because you’ve had it for too long or perhaps because there was a security/privacy breach where some of your information may have been leaked and your account is no longer secure. this is the internet machine! is our information ever secure?! stahp it with the lies. this also leads to whatever website we’re speaking about not letting you use an old/previous password. (if life only did that to people and their ex-boyfriends/ex-girlfriends … ha!) what if i’m emotionally attached to my current password? gah, don’t tell me how to live my life!

the twin to that horrible moment described above is when you’re trying to reset your password and for some unfathomable reason, they ask you to enter your old password. like, really? i’m trying to get a new one because i can’t fucking remember the old one, dammit. whyyyyy. (i actually felt a little revolt of rage in the pit of my stomach while typing that sentence, in case you’re wondering how passionately i feel about passwords). should i bang my head once against the keyboard and choose that as a password?

i’ve even had to email the administrator for the timesheet application for work twice so that she could reset my password because i locked myself out of the application, after one too many failed sign-in attempts.

the worst password-related story of all is the fact that i’ve been trying to delete my myspace account for years but i can’t reset my myspace password because i don’t remember my old, old, old yahoo email password, therefore, i obviously can’t access any kind of reset link sent to me. though luck to you, young valeria and your emo, teenage-years-worth of cyber throw up … too fucking bad.

to close off on a great note, i’ll probably have no recollection of writing this because i’ve had an amount of caffeine that i’m sure is socially unacceptable. also, it amazes me how i can write exactly 1,400 words on passwords in less than an hour, but it took me weeks to write 6-page essays in college … not sure if proud or ashamed.

note to self: what the hell did i write?!

-v