Oh no.

Please don’t make me think up a new password again.

My creative capacity was exhausted like several thousand New User Registrations ago. I simply don’t have any more juice in my brain for this kind of endeavor.

Look. I know all the reasonable security practices. Don’t reuse passwords for different services. Don’t “almost” reuse them except change a few words or numbers at the end (hackers know that one too). Don’t use the street you grew up on, your mother’s maiden name, lyrics from your favorite song, any of the password clichés of yesteryear. In fact, don’t have any sort of pattern or template for your passwords that could theoretically make it easier for hackers to guess them.

I’ve tried my best to follow them. Really, I have. I’m a good, clean, ideal end user.

But after signing up for an uncountable infinity of Web services, I’m sorry. My password-generating ability is fried.

I guess I’m doomed to stare at this registration Web page for the next thirty minutes while I desperately scrounge up some shred of genuine inspiration. I could try casting my eyes around the room again, but I’ve already used literally all of the objects in here in one password or another long ago. I’ve gone through my inventories of weird birds, obscure languages, and IKEA furniture names. I’ve appropriated the names of all the high school acquaintances I haven’t talked to in years, all the minor characters and settings in every fantasy book series I’ve read, all the Thai restaurants and dental practices and train stations from here to Boston. I’ve employed every last punctuation character in the ASCII character set and then some. I’ve used all of the number sequences that sound like birthdays or years, and also all of the number sequences that don’t. Every waking experience, every meaningful symbol in my life, fed into the twin maws of New Password and Confirm Password. I have no more grist for the mill of password generation.

What now?

I don’t want to stare at this registration Web page all day. I have more important things to do. But I’m not going to be able to access this new HSA through this Web portal until I make an account. And I can’t finish the account creation unless I come up with a new password and confirm it. And if I don’t finish the account creation, then it’s either going to linger uncomfortably in my mind all day or I’ll forget to do it.

And the voices in my mind which represent the help desk would probably laugh at me if I couldn’t get past the password creation part of New User Registration. And so I cannot surrender.

You can do this, Gracie. You can do this.

Just breathe.

Think.

Okay, if nothing meaningful is coming to mind, then we’re just going to have to resort to something meaningless. This is profoundly unsatisfying, because meaningful passwords are easier for me to remember, but writer’s block is a harsh master.

Here goes nothing.

Phew. And we live to see another day.