The Adventure Starts Now, Right Here

My mobile phone stopped working last night. I’m not going into a lament about how much we’re tied to these devices nor how bereft I felt, that’s a whole other post. And to be honest, it was the microphone that stopped working, not the whole thing, but when even its just a part of the whole, I tend to catastrophise and label the whole damn thing as broken.

As far as I was concerned, it was broken and useless, because no-one I spoke to could make out what I was saying. So what use was it?

I went online to see if I could find a fix and the SONY site users forum seemed to suggest this was a common fault. Good to know but of no real help right now. One guy did have some useful advice, he suggested the mic could be fixed by doing a ‘soft reset.’

What the hell’s a ‘soft reset’? Being me, I decided to take a hammer to the problem (not literally but nearly!) So I found settings and pushed the button for Factory Reset. I regretted it as soon as I pushed the button, which is always how I feel after I do something drastic. It didn’t help that there was a warning stating I’d lose all my data, I pressed on regardless – pun intended 😉

When I have a bee in my bonnet, that’s what I do, ground zero, drastic action. If it doesn’t work, bash it a few times – bound to help. Why have I never rethought this frankly occasionally dangerous, certainly expensive and almost always useless strategy for problems that arise? I will have to ponder that,

Anyway, the phone went dark, I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach I always get when I’ve waded into something that’s outside of my capabilities and expertise and I thought, I’ll give it a while before pushing the button to restart. Pushed the power button, screen came up, a flicker of hope that all would be well in my stomach as the start up process initiated but then the screen greyed out with a great big POWER OFF message.

Jeepers, WTF, hell no, Yikes, what have I done! I grabbed that phone like it was a hot coal and switched it off like it was radioactive. I gave it five minutes, bound to help, giving it some time to settle itself and then I tried again. And again. And again.

Every time I turned it on, the same thing came up. POWER OFF across a greyed out screen, by the second or maybe the tenth time, it lost the power of surprise and I got bored and quickly frustrated.

I left it switched off overnight and went to bed, figuring a good night’s rest might help. What good 8 hours sleep would do the phone was debatable but I certainly needed it. And I hope that come morning I would come downstairs, push the power button and the phone would sing its song of notification, messages, missed calls, WHATSAPPs to me.

Morning came as it does, and I approached the phone with wary hope. You know, its similar to the hope you have when you’re checking your lottery ticket online, you type in all your numbers, knowing you haven’t won but there’s that tiny part of you that’s choosing between yachts and Ferraris.

Yes, I was hoping it would work but was 98% convinced the tech gods would not be on my side. And so it proved. POWER OFF.

I was condemning myself for my rush to try and fix things rather than seek out expert help. I always have to do everything, all by myself and end up making it worse. Why couldn’t I just hold on until I contacted the retailer or called into a repair specialist or something other than push the destruct button?

Arrgh! I lost hours yesterday evening and this morning because the phone situation took over the front and centre of my mind. There was no room for anything else. Ridiculous right?

Its not as if I couldn’t manage my day without my phone. I use my laptop when speaking to the non-local clients booked in for the afternoon. I could also use Facebook Messenger on the laptop to contact people who were expecting to hear from me, so nothing got dropped business wise. I could get admin and my writing done and I wanted to record a meditation for the Loving Yourself Comes First pre course work. All possible without the phone.

And yet that greyed out screen and giant POWER OFF message dominated my morning and little else got done.

Having sent SOS messages (emails) out to the retailer, repair shops and anyone else I could think of that could help, I looked at the offending item again and decided to give it another go.

I switched the phone on, POWER OFF the screen shouted at me. I lost my temper and started poking my finger at the screen, poking that POWER OFF and the phone vibrated and switched itself off. What the actual F?

Was that what I was supposed to do all along? Tap, maybe not poke, the screen? And now, would the phone switch on, reboot, work?

Oh yes, it bloody did!

What a waste of time, energy, emotion, thought, effort and the mic is still not working!

Having been worked up all morning and gotten nothing done, my plan was to make a cup of tea, sit down and write. After all, I’d lost hours to this nonsense.

But my soul told me to get Amelia and go out for a walk. The sun was shining in the blue sky, a beautiful crisp late autumn day. I needed fresh air, exercise, and time away from myself, in a different place. Wrapped up warmly, it was perfect.

‘Right, Amelia.’ I said, ‘Let’s go to the canal.’ Its one of my favourite walks here, despite the fact that we have about 10-12 minutes of walking along a busy intersection before we cross the bridge and access the steps that lead us down to the canal. Down there, the sounds of traffic fade away to nothing, the water reflects the sky, the ducks and swans ease casually by, it’s a different world.

‘Come on, Amelia,’ I said getting testy with her as I pulled her onwards for the fifth or sixth time. Unusually, she kept stopping, as I was striding briskly forward to get to the canal where our walk would begin.

She stopped again to sniff and this time, I stopped too, to look at her and ask what the hell she was playing at. She looked up at me, like she was rolling her eyes in exasperation and I got it.

‘Of course, baby, your walk started as soon as we stepped through the front door. You’re right baby girl, I’m an ejit.’ If you’re a dog owner and you tell me you don’t talk to your dogs, I won’t believe you, we all do it. Maybe you don’t put on a special voice and have conversations back and forth, speaking for them in turn as I do, but you do talk to them. How could you not? They’re your family right?

And as I walked on, I realised that my little dog had once again given me another valuable lesson. One that applied to all areas of life.

Because everything is where you are, that’s where it all starts and ends. Right now, where you are.

Not when you get to a certain point in your journey, not when you have this or do that thing or be something else, or meet that person.

Its all now. What you’ve got, where you are, who you are. And it’s always been now. Nothing else, now is everything.

So embrace whatever it is that’s in front of you. Its all a glorious adventure, even when it feels like it’s not. Because how could it be anything else? And who is making it feel like anything else? Again, that would be you.

Its time to straighten up, step out, go for it, all in. That thing you’ve been putting off, time and time and time again? Its part of your path to get you from here to there. You don’t get to go to there without going all the way from here. It’s your walk, its your work to do.

And its not going anywhere til its done!

Another way to love yourself is to do everything that’s in front of you with the same attitude you do the stuff you love to do. No judgement, it’s not good or bad, it is what it is. No preferences for this or that, it all gets done because its all there for you to do.

Difficult conversation? Have it now

A boring meeting? Stay attentive throughout by concentrating on the speaker and finding something interesting about them, what they say.

A Painful confrontation? Get it over with as soon as you can so you all move on.

The walk starts when I step out on those traffic choked streets, not 12 minutes later when I reach the canal. Life starts now, not when you’ve reached some arbitrary goal you’re holding at arms length.

This is part of the adventure of living – ups and downs, good, bad, hard or gentle, loving or not.

You get to decide whether you move on quickly or stay stuck by embracing the present and doing what needs done or struggling, denying, repressing, resisting.

And its always your choice. Always your decision. It’s up to you, all the time. Every time.

Love,

Cynthia xx

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