We have had a few more challenges than usual lately, and that has me thinking about how these things typically get handled. It is always frustrating when things don’t go exactly according to plan – yet that is also life! Most of the time things will not go exactly how you want them to no matter how hard you try. That doesn’t mean you should give up and just take your marbles and go home crying either. Exactly the contrary – just figure out what to do next and do it. Then keep on doing it until things are back in alignment and otherwise back on course.
But that is not what most of us do is it?
People lose their freaking minds when things don’t go well. Some start yelling and screaming or cursing. Others get emotional and start crying. Some become depressed and morose. A few do all of these things (scary to watch too!).
In years gone by I must admit I would have been in the hurling profanity group. These days I am much more calm – most of the time anyway. I am still human though, and I don’t always keep it together completely, but I do most of the time anyway. The most recent trouble began this past Monday when I went to upload my podcast. Everything was going fine – the upload to the server completed like normal. I edited the post I had made for it – then I went to hit the publish button… “That’s strange…” I thought to myself as I noticed the button wasn’t normal – it was a lighter color – kind of opaque and it just wouldn’t work.
So I tried it again and again. Nothing. Then I tried the save draft button – same thing. Nothing was working. I thought what the hell is wrong with this thing? I couldn’t get any of the buttons to work, so I made a copy of the post just in case, and exited word press. At least it let me do that. I was thinking I would just log back in and maybe whatever the problem was would resolve itself – so I went to go back in.
The site was not letting me in – and to make matters worse I couldn’t even FIND the site let alone log in – I just got some weird error code I had never seen before.
My blood pressure began to rise and all kinds of curse words began to assemble getting ready to spew forth in an uninterrupted solid stream… Then I reminded myself that wasn’t going to fix anything at all – and I began to calm back down. Ok now what.
After I took a few moments to settle back down I contacted my site administrator (wife) and informed her of the malfunction. Her response was ” What did YOU do to IT?
For a second I felt my blood pressure going back up… so I waited a good ten seconds or so before I proceeded to explain what had happened. She just looked at me with obvious suspicion that I had broken something (and in fairness I have crashed and otherwise broken things many times messing with things I do not understand under the cyber hood) So she called our hosting service and after a lengthy discussion they came to the conclusion it was definitely broken. Then they talked some more and the tech tried various methods to get the thing back and get it working right again. At one point they thought they had it – for a few minutes – then the site went back down again. After a few different fixes, they finally determined that their server was having a malfunction. They said they would fix it and the site would be back up in a few hours. Ok. Not what we wanted to hear – but it is what it is so no need to be upset, I thought to myself.
The next morning they called back and spoke to my wife again. I could tell right away by the expression on her face when she went to update me that she had not received good news. Their first question was “Do you have a back up of your site?” or words to that effect anyway. That’s never good.
Apparently, she said, our site was “GONE”.
At this point, as I am hearing all this I am still calm – on the outside anyway. inside I’m thing WTF do you mean it’s gone…
Longer story shorter – after some conversation with my wife the rep on the phone poked a few more keys and looked a little harder and discovered everything was still there – just not where it was supposed to be. A few minutes later the site was back up and functioning normally.
To help make sure this doesn’t happen again we have made numerous behind the scenes changes and upgrades and more are underway as we speak. Even then we are laying out plans to add additional resources as we continue to grow. There are no certainties, but we continue to do what we can anyway to keep making improvements.
So just in case, you were trying to get on the site and getting a weird error and couldn’t – we are sorry about that – and at least now you know why.
But back to how we handle these things. When I say we I mean you, me and everyone else on the planet.
Life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns. There will always be challenges and obstacles and sometimes just plain trouble.That is a fact. So since we can’t always avoid unfortunate events in all cases – even with tools and resources and despite our best efforts – it becomes more critical as to how we deal with these things when they happen.
Sometimes you and I will miss a deadline, fail to meet a mile marker/milestone or suffer some other setback. Sometimes it is due to circumstances beyond our control – other times it is due to our own mistakes. Do we lose it and have a breakdown? Do we turn on each other and rip each other to shreds out of frustration? or do we work harder to keep emotions in check and think rationally so we can actually do something positive to fix the problem? The answer that we should pick is obvious – yet it certainly isn’t the easiest.
So how can you handle it when things don’t go as expected – how can you roll with the punches when you need to?
Stuff happens. Emotions cause inappropriate responses sometimes – but as soon as you become aware and can see that – then you can start to calm back down. Breathe in and breathe out, take a few moments and think things through – then do what you can to make things better. That’s the best you can do sometimes, and it’s good enough.
Though the site is back up and running fine at the moment – I still haven’t published Monday’s podcast. I have another due tonight – so I think I will publish them both back to back at the same time. So feel free to check out the podcasts and check out our Manifesto if you haven’t yet. By the way, I just got my own copy to hang on the wall that my wife ordered for me – and the thing is beautiful! It is also HUGE too!
Want your own? Feel free to order it from our shop, it is a nice reminder to Choose Your Own Course, Build a Better Life… and to stay on course even when it’s not always easy to do either.