I have often written in my blogs about how I feel about tech and that it is supposed to make our lives easier, not more difficult. Well, over the last two weeks I have found that it has been much more the latter than the former. I subscribe to Microsoft 365. I have my word program and my outlook emails all arranged through them. Then, two weeks ago, it automatically updated to something called Microsoft Edge. And THAT, my dear readers, is where it all went to $#1+.
First off, it did not ASK me if I wanted to upgrade to Edge. If it had, I would have clicked on NO. Instead it did this automatically. Okay, well, let’s see where this takes it. Hoping that it would be a mass improvement on something that I already found to be excellent, I was sorrowfully disappointed.
To begin with, it evaporated all of my mass email contact lists, which I use for things like this blog, for my FLIGHT online newsletter distribution, for all of my upcoming events. GONE. Trying not to panic, I contacted my tech guy, who is currently working about 7 hours away in a northern community. He tried to walk me through discovery processes during a video chat. That was not working, so we linked up our computers remotely so that he could get in and see what was happening. After a few hours of poking around and trying one thing after another, after another, we were both left with a giant question mark above our heads.
He decided to come back into town for the weekend and made time to come over and get into it in person, which proved productive and my email lists were restored by separating my Outlook server from Microsoft Edge altogether. Thank the gods! So then everything seemed to be good to go. The next day, after he is already 3 1/2 hours into his trip back up north, I go to my computer and turn it on to do some online banking. There is a message that comes up on the screen. I have no idea what this means, and my computer won’t even let me in, so I screen shot it and sent it to him. He has never seen a message like this before in all his years of doing computer work. So texting me various ideas of what to do, I tried each one to no avail. Then he phoned me (he was a passenger, not the driver of the vehicle). It was crazy to say the least. At least I had my laptop that is still working. I told him to phone me once he got home and we could figure it out then, which he did. It was determined that most likely my hard drive on my desktop was fried. So next time he is in town, we are going shopping for a new hard drive, which he will install for me.
In the meantime, many of my documents that I had on my desktop, which were supposed to automatically synch up with my laptop, I have discovered have not done so. This meant that I have spent the last 2 days re-writing things like my e-receipts forms, my invoice forms, my instruction forms for in-person and long-distance sessions and so on. And then I discovered that the FLIGHT issue that I was working on for April is GONE. Now, to start from scratch is extremely time-consuming. At least I have the submissions in a file in my Gmail. But by the looks of things at this late a date, the April issue will not be happening. I am hoping that this gets resolved enough that I can at least assemble an issue for May.
Sometimes, when things like this happen, it becomes very easy to become overwhelmed. I was almost certain that Mercury must be in retrograde with everything going wrong, but alas it was behaving itself. And I must admit that the evaporation of my email lists did overwhelm me initially. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief once they were retrieved. But for the rest of it, I have found myself taking on the attitude of “letting go” of what is not within my control. If I did not take this attitude, I would likely have a nervous breakdown. But life has too many other more positive things in it for me to allow this to consume me.
I have family, friends, my fur babies, my music, my house and yard, my houseplants and so on that bring me joy and fulfillment. And I will be damned if something like stupid technology is going to keep me down. The reason I am writing this, though, is to let everyone who reads it know that: 1. There is more to life than technology, 2. You can indeed change the things you can, recognize the things you cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference, and 3. If you are a FLIGHT subscriber you need not expect an April issue, unfortunately.
I do hope, however, that others out in the world around me are not experiencing the trouble with technology that the last two weeks have presented to me. It really does suck.