Oops!

How's my mental health today?

I'm feeling quite peaceful at the moment.

That's  actually a bit of a surprise to me because of a mistake I made yesterday. After having had a very restful sleep, including going back to bed after being up for about half an hour at 6:30 a.m., I started organizing files and documents as I prepared to focus on the next two projects on my to-do list. I moved files around, deleted some very old files that I didn't want anymore and reworked the filing system for my 'writing projects' files.

Heidi called and asked me to bring her some stuff she wanted to use at work, so I popped out for that little errand.

When I got back, I resumed my document sorting. I managed to pull together materials that I wanted to use later in the afternoon when I was going to continue working on a document I had started putting together last week. As I sifted through pages of hand written notes I entered them into documents and added them to my "writing stuff" file.

In the midst of that I received several emails from my daughter. I had been working on her tax return but she failed to provide me with some critical information. Some of it arrived in the emails but it took several more exchanges between us before I had everything I needed to complete the taxes. My daughter is leaving for South Africa in a week and it's imperative that her tax return is submitted before she leaves because she will be gone for five months and the refund she is due will certainly improve the health of her finances. I finished and called her with the results, teasing her a bit (because that's what dads do) before I gave her the good news.

I decided it was a good time to take a break from sitting at my computer, so I took out my bicycle and rode over to see my friend Dave Gooch at Gooch's Bicycle and Hobby shop. I left the bike there for its annual spring tuneup, chatted with Dave for a while and then went for a short walk before heading home. (Dave, do I get a discount for the free advertising?)

Then it was back to work on my computer. I opened the document I wanted to work on and discovered I had lost about 120 pages of previous work. I dug around in all my files to see if I could find a back up copy that might contain the missing pages, but was unsuccessful.

An "Oops" situation like this would have been calamitous at one time, but I seem to be more relaxed now. After muttering a very minor "expletive deletive", I started the task of rebuilding the document. After all, at least I didn't lose the whole document and wasting time and energy angrily fretting about it was not going magically bring the document back.

I just have to make sure I don't let this little incident push me back into the obsessive habit of creating a ridiculous number of back-up copies. I'm still trying to clean up my files after many years of anxiety-driven multiple back-up files.

So where did the affable response come from? I don't know, maybe the violin and cello music I was listening to helped. That stuff relaxed me so much that I almost fell asleep.

Hopefully there will be no"Oops!" moments today.


Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
~~ Bruce Barton