Well if I thought I was blocked yesterday, things got worse. My PC seems to have got hit by a virus, or something, and is in a state of nervous collapse. The desktop has gone from a sea of pretty icons to a lot of ominous missing links. I can only get into two or three programs, email is down and things have clearly gone badly wrong. I’m writing this from an internet cafe.
I find it quite hard to stay calm in these circumstances. I think I have a bit of a default setting of panic and get into catastrophic fantasies about losing all my data. Ah well, it’s been a good chance to practice acceptance. More and more I find the best way to deal with fear is to accept it. Indeed, I will often try to welcome it. I focus on the feeling itself, and try not to get into the thinking about it. So last night in bed I had to keep feeling the fear.
Also, I do have to point out to myself that I spend a good bit of time persuading people of the virtues of Improv, of building on what IS. So I realised I needed to practice what I preach. As the saying goes, we all teach what we most need to learn!
It seems to work. This Sunday morning I’ve been online uncovering all sorts of promising resources to get this problem fixed.
And I’m long overdue for a nice new computer anyway. (In fact, hours before the PC went wobbly I’d been window shopping for a shiny replacement. I wonder if PCs, like people, have an instinct for impending redunancy and start getting upset?)