If Only It Were That Easy...

moar funny pictures

I would even teach myself to knit if it meant I could whip up a new screen for my laptop.

Or whatever it is that stopped working. Ed keeps changing his diagnosis back and forth between software and hardware; between screen itself and the video card. Thinking it was a wore out screen, he hooked up the monitor of his mom's PC to my laptop--hoping we could get logged on and into my files so I could get the rest of them moved onto thumb drives--but that screen too stayed black upon bootup. So he changed his theory to something inside having gotten jarred loose--like the video card--either when I dropped the laptop last January or when I broke the hinge on the lid on my book light last June which caused the case to bulge at the upper left corner and a sound that could almost be called a rattle when the laptop was tilted.

With that theory in mind he proceeded to unscrew screws on the bottom, lifting off little 'lids' and when that didn't give him access to what he wanted to see, he went after the screws holding the entire case together. But after getting out all the screws he could find, removing the battery and gently prying at the gap the ensued something was still pinning the case together and he didn't want to force it.

At that point he told me that he was in over his head and he needed to get in contact with a friend of a friend who does laptop repair and might be able to advise him. He won't see the friend until work on Monday. So this nightmare which began last Sunday morning takes another turn.

Since I'm leaving for Longview on Friday morning it is looking unlikely that I'll be able to get the rest of my files off the laptop before I leave. Now I'm panicked there may not be any way to get them off at all. What I have left on there that is truly irreplaceable are the pictures from my camera taken since May; the hundreds of family photos I scanned between May and late June; some of the original graphics done for various projects (mostly existing or planned websites or planned needlework projects; some downloaded music; and the data files for the info managing ap Chaos Manager2 which served as my PIM for several years before I acquired WhizFolders Organizer Pro and still holds a lot of data I never got around to moving over to Whiz, including contact info, passwords and links and numerous notes to self of the kind writers make when musing on a WIP.

And of course a great deal of the blame for this is my own. I've blogged here repeatedly since the inception of Joystory about my negligence when it comes to keeping my files in order and backed up. I guess I'm incorrigible.

Added to the panic and the feeling that nothing is going right this month is the feelings of failure and self-flagellation--a serious questioning of whether I deserve to succeed, whether I've been fooling myself all along as to my qualifications to accomplish any of my aspirations. All of which puts my mood in the pits out of which I still fiercely attempt to climb but a sense of overwhelming weariness is gaining on me.

Question: are the events and thoughts causing the mood or visa versa.

Backing up my files isn't the only thing I've neglected in the last several weeks.

• I stopped meditating shortly after arriving at my mom's last January. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
  
• I slowed way down on mini-tramp work when the weather got too chilly in early November and have been on it only three or four time since Thanksgiving and even then only for five or ten minute sessions.
  
• I stopped being careful about what I put in my mouth and when (things I should, I don't and things I shouldn't I do)
  
• I stopped writing altogether after NaNo except in blog posts and you can see what they've amounted to lately. (so she wants to be a writer? ha!)
• I stopped taking care to get a solid 7.5 hours of sleep each and every day so my hours are all over the clock (I keep forgetting to take the 5HTP which aids in this and I self-medicate the fatigue with extra caffeine to the tune of triple squared any sane definition of a healthy amount)

Well. Enough whining. I have work to do and if nothing else it will be distracting. I have about ten by six inches left to go on that crochet project which I still hope to include in the package for the family member whose name I drew to be their secret Santa. Our extended family (on Ed's side) is having our get together tomorrow afternoon. So I'll be hooking the night away.