Lately I have been busy tending to my writing life. By busy I mean that I’m thinking about it. I’m giving myself pep talks laced with guilt to help me get on with my projects. And, I’m taking naps when that gets too exhausting.

Seriously, I have been working on submitting my middle grade novel to various agents. This is extremely taxing. I have to figure out what they want and how they want it and turn that into a dazzling submission.

I was working on Submission #3 when a problem arose. I do not want to put in writing exactly what that problem was just in case the people to whom I am submitting decide to read this blog post. I don’t want to show my hand and have them thinking stuff like – Can we really work with this woman?

So, I set out to fix my problem. It should have been simple. Emphasis on “should.” After repeated attempts, I called my resident IT guy and brilliant husband at his office. Bob the Engineer is a logical and linear thinking guy who has a tendency to roll his eyes. I think I actually heard them roll when I told him my problem.

He walked me through it, and nothing worked. Thankfully, I wasn’t in a time pinch. I let Bob off the hook, and he said he’d help me that evening. But silly me thought I would give it one more try, and I managed to lock myself out of my own documents – something that would never have happened if Bob was in the room because my computer fears him.

After dinner that night, Bob offered to look at my computer. I said that I didn’t want to do that, because I was not speaking to my computer and he should join me in giving it the silent treatment. More eye rolling, but he was smart enough to leave this one alone.

The next night Bob forgot about it until bedtime. He innocently asked if I had checked to see if my documents were unlocked. I told him I was still avoiding the computer. I had not forgiven it for making me feel like an idiot. He turned around, presumably so I wouldn’t see him roll his eyes, and we dropped the subject.

By the third day I was feeling forgiving and allowed Bob to help me out. It took him about 30 seconds to rectify things and the next day I submitted my novel.

But now I have a new chapter in my computer saga. I write the blog for the Women’s Ministry at our church, which is posted on our church website, which is run by some church media group. We had a guest writer so all I had to do was format her words and post. Easy? Not this time.

I don’t know what came over me. For some strange reason I decided to get fancy and explore a new area using a featured photo that I thought would attract more attention to the site, since our guest writer had written a tremendous piece.

This is the photo I decided to delete. The photo that mocked me over and over. I should have thrown my computer over the cliff when I had the chance.

After I had the whole thing ready to go, I decided I didn’t like the photo that I chose, so I deleted it. Honestly, I did. But it had mysterious staying power. I’d get out of the program, go back in, and there it was. It refused to go away, much like the random calls that I get from people who aren’t selling me anything. Very annoying! Then I tried staying in the program and deleting the picture (again) and clicking to upload another picture. The twirly circle would just spin and spin and lock me out of my document.

I was starting to get a complex. This time I knew that it was not operator error, though in all honesty I have known that before and it turned out to be operator error, so I’m never too confident. I sent a help message to the web master, and lo and behold, it was their fault! They were having server upgrade problems. Isn’t that the best news?

It was to me, since I was locked out of two different documents in a week’s time. I told Bob that I think I may be getting the hang of this techy trouble shooting thing. I think he rolled his eyes.