Nancy's Notes
Simply Unplug
If you work with computers at all, you know the frustration when things just don’t work as they should. When you work on a network of several computers connected, that frustration level compounds exponentially with issues that are difficult—no, impossible—to trace. That is, unless you are a network guru who really digs that kind of stuff. But for those of us who are not computer gurus, the general “quick fix” is to simply shut down, sometimes even unplug the computer, and then restart a few minutes later. In many cases, that’s what it takes to get things going again.
Our computers here at the Sentinel have been a source of anxiety for quite some time. It really is amazing that no computers have been tossed out onto Main Street, as we certainly have threatened to do so many times. In the deadline world that we live in at the Sentinel, with our very livelihood depending on our computers, there is no time to be dealing with computer issues. Even so, we were spending a lot of time rebooting computers, just hoping that they come back on again.
Life, in general, sometimes takes the same route.
The daily political bashing and all the campaign rhetoric is disgusting, and November can’t get here fast enough. In reality, though, the fighting won’t stop after the election, because our politicians seem to have forgotten how to work together (if they every knew how). When was the last time something positive came out of a political office anywhere?
The news lately has been anything but pleasant. As if the political stuff isn’t bad enough, there have been wildfires over the western half of our country raging out of control, rioting and protesting against racial injustice at numerous places, the hurricane that hit Louisiana and other areas down south—it’s just all too much. There are many days I just don’t watch or listen to any news; I simply have to unplug.
A few weeks ago, I went through a particularly rough time. I had some major issues going on at the housing authority, I was concerned about a health problem of my own, and then I had to put my cat to sleep. I reached a point where I simply had to take a couple days off from my work and unplug myself from the stressful situations.
A well-respected author, Anne Lamott, has been credited with saying: “Almost everything will work again if you simply unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” This is very true and worth remembering. Many times it helps just to step away from a problem for a while and then approach it with new eyes. It works almost every time.
Here at the Sentinel, we were beyond the “unplug” fix, and the stress was wearing on us all. Our anxiety levels were reduced considerably last week when we had new solid state hard drives installed on our computers and added a network-attached storage device with five terabytes of storage. Although we’re still working through some bugs, for the most part, we are much more efficient and not spending so much time dealing with computer issues.
There’s nothing that we can do about the gloom-and-doom on the 6 o’clock news. Even if we choose not to watch it or listen to it, the mess is still there; it’s not going to go away. The answer is to keep reminding ourselves to put our faith and trust in God, and not man. God is the only One who has the answers to all our questions and our problems. He even provided a Textbook to read that has all the answers, and He sent a Comforter to be with us, never leaving us to figure out all the answers on our own.
