February here already

What else could go wrong?

The closer I get to self-publishing my first Romantic Suspense Novel, White Rose of Promise, the more unexpected little problems I encounter.

The most recent one took me a lot of time, and a whole treasury of emotional energy, to deal with. It derailed my progress in all of my writing activities. Long hours spent online ‘chatting’ to the Technical Support team took me on an adventure of discovery.

For those who have visited my page before, you may have noticed that the ‘my email isn’t working’ notification was up for a VERY long time. I was reasonably certain that I had made some foundational error, but didn’t have either the time or the emotional energy to deal with it in 2018.

A tricky problem

Turns out I was correct. The seventh ‘chat’ finally revealed that I had missed some basic information right at the start of setting up my account. An attempt to rectify the problem back then didn’t work, because the additional feature I was paying for was not attached to this page… It was NEVER going to work. All fixed now 🙂

As a writer, I am very interested in the emotional rollercoaster that accompanied this difficult lesson. The first time I contacted the Help Desk, I felt very anxious but confident that I had explained myself correctly. The second time, I was annoyed that the reassurances hadn’t come to anything. In fact, my situation was much worse – my whole web page went offline!

The third time, I was frustrated and impatient.

Something unexpected happened after that. The anxiety and anger dissipated, to be replaced by a lighthearted feeling of relief. I was able to sit at the computer with a smile on my face, and gratitude in my heart.

It didn’t seem to matter that I was losing writing time, only that someone was doing their best to help me. The worst case scenario had been fulfilled and rectified – my web page was back online, the links to my posts on my facebook page worked again, and eventually, the promise that my email would work would be fulfilled.

So what changed?

So what changed between the third and fourth ‘chat’? The helpful advisor told me that I ‘obviously’ hadn’t waited long enough for changes 1 and 2 to work, and said not to contact them again until I had waited 48 hours. So I did.

Please don’t think that I patiently waited during the remaining hours in silence. I petitioned heaven, both about my problem with the email and because the torrent of emotions and the accompanying fallout was wrecking my ability to deal with all the other daily struggles.

Only when I reached the end of the seventh ‘chat’ did I see the resolution to the email problem, but having my emotions flip to positive ones gave me patience and the expectation that everything was going to be fine )i(

Please comment!

I am signing off now. If you have the time, please help me celebrate the email account victory, by leaving me a comment. I would love to open my emails and find a notification to remind me that even the little problems have a guaranteed success.
Chrissy )i(