And the Secret Word is....

I think my brain is full. Either that, or it's given up on working correctly and I blame it all on one thing.

Passwords.

Everything requires a password these days. When I first started using the internet back in, 1998, or somewhere along that time line, I used one password. I only needed it for email and maybe AOL Instant Messenger. Nothing else required a password. Because I only had to use one, I can even tell you to this day what it is. I remember. Why then, can't I remember the password to my online pay stub, or one of my few credit cards, or my investment portfolio, or my log in for work, or one of my email accounts, or one of my Facebook accounts, or Twitter or this blog. The list could go on forever.

I used to try to rotate between two passwords, but one of those was deemed not "safe enough" so I took that out of the mix and began rotating between three. I thought they were good, hacker safe, but some programs do not like them. For those programs I have to come up with a new password. That means I also have to remember that password and I'm sorry, I just can't handle that.

I have two main problems that I think someone should fix about password usage. The first is programs that make you change them every few months. I get it, safety concerns, but it becomes a serious problem when I can't remember that password because it's not in my rotation of passwords I use.

The worst is the log in at work. Every three months we have to change our passwords and it can't be any of the last FOUR passwords you used. This means I have to come up with at least 5 different passwords per year and they have to include at least one number, blah blah blah. ADP log in you are making me crazy. I spend so much time trying to remember what that password is, because I use it everyday, I forget those passwords I don't use quite as often. I can't tell you how many times I've had to go to the CFO to get a new password to log into my pay stub page because, one I rarely check it, and two I lock myself out of the page whenever I do log in because I can't remember what the password is and I can't keep it the same as any of my other passwords.

The other big problem is when the internet page will remember your password, but heaven forbid something happens, it's not logged in already and then I have to remember a password I haven't used in months!

And don't get me started on the "user names".

My brain just can't take it. There has to be some solution to the unnecessary amounts of passwords required to function effectively in this world.