Computer Glitches.

I've missed a few days of posting, due to ISP problems.

The technician arrived, performed his magic, clicked his ruby slippers, and pronounced it repaired.

When he first arrived, he was eying our hookup dubiously - the long convoluted run of phone cord between my computer and the one phone connection in the house - up hill and down dale, around doorways, across walls, meandering over fully half the house before arriving at the destination.

Meanwhile, there was a phone jack directly behind the computer, but that one wasn't functional. Instead of calling to have someone come out and activate it, which would have been the sensible thing to do, we had just used the 4 miles of phone cord we had available, to run out to the active phone jack, in the livingroom.

The phone technician decided, that even though the interior connection wasn't what was causing my problem, he just couldn't tolerate our haphazard set-up. He activated the phone jack directly behind the computer, and jokingly suggested I use the old phone cord for tying up parcels, or plants.

After he'd left, I was laughing to myself, thinking this wasn't the first time I've made my life unnecessarily complicated, and achieved a rather half-baked solution, because I had to have instant gratification.

Talking to a program friend tonight, I touched on this - how I've done the silliest things, in service to getting instant results, and instant relief. Heaven forfend that I should suffer through feeling my feelings for more than a few disagreeable moments - fix it now, with whatever hunk of ancient cord is lying around. My instant fix may create future predicaments, but in my short-sightedness, this moment's relief is the only salient point.

Al-Anon is teaching me that my feelings are not going to destroy me. They ebb and flow with life itself, and if I recognise my emotions, name them, articulate them to a trusted friend, they are manageable. I used to view my emotions with fear and trepidation, I couldn't self-soothe. I didn't know that many times, just waiting them out, and working my program while I wait, is solution enough.