Printing Problems

Ah, the good old days—when road trips required a stack of printed MapQuest directions that were inevitably forgotten, leading to an unplanned detour back home. That was 20-some years ago. Fast forward to today, and we’ve evolved past the need for printers… or so I thought.

In 2019, I was gifted a printer. It sat untouched in a closet for a year before I finally dumped it when I moved. Not once did it serve its intended purpose. It did actually serve any purpose. It ate up so much space. And yet, about three times a year, the universe reminds me that printing is still a necessary evil.

Lately, though, printing has become an all-out war.

Chantel, being the responsible one, insisted we print all of our travel documents for Tanzania. A smart move, sure, but it required a major inconvenient pit stop. Not really that big of a deal, maybe like 15 minutes after work, but it felt like a lot.

Then came the name-change saga. We finally carved out time to legally change our names (marriage, Real IDs, all the fun ish), only to realize we needed—you guessed it—printed documents. Because why make the process easy when we can make it unnecessarily complicated? We are 0-1 at the Social Security office during this process for those keeping score.

And then, there was the art situation. We wanted to display some of Chantel’s photography (exciting Bag Tag news coming soon!), but of course, that meant printing. We finally got film developed from 2021 (we’ve been busy, okay?), and I found myself at a print shop requesting two 12x16 prints. Turns out, 12x16 paper isn’t a thing? So why do they sell frames in that size?! Suddenly, I was being ambushed with choices—how to resize the image, what paper size to use, glossy or matte? Sir, I don’t care. I just need it printed.

Every time I go through this, I think, maybe I should just get a printer. But then I remember: printers haven’t evolved in two decades, they’re still ridiculously expensive, ink costs a fortune, and they’re massive eyesores.

Printing is a menace. I hate it. Plus, it kills trees. People forget.