Well the devil sure knows how to get to me! Melt downs of ugly waxy proportions! Between my chronic techno-disability and my present-tense mush brain, Jerkhead has an easy romp into my simple, awaiting world! I teach one stinkin’ class online at Stepping Stone and EVERY week I manage to screw up the logistics of it and compromise the flow of it. Links to google meetings don’t work. My email refuses to open with my password and I can’t even reset it because I can’t get them to change the phone number the text code is sent to. Our WiFi goes out. My laptop gives me the message of “low battery,” warning me to plug it in, only to shut down 3 seconds later. I hit the “end call” button instead of the “mute” one, offing my connection. Some of these mistakes a definitely mine… but some absolutely fall beyond the pale of my control! I think my popularity as a teacher has more to do with the special need adults wanting to see how I will screw it up this week, more than the quality of the content. The upside of this is that they feel valuable as they remold the wax of my meltdown back into a functioning human being with words of encouragement. What patient sweethearts! Yesterday I was DETERMINED to not let Satan win this battle, so I got on my laptop 1 hour before the class, set up all my tabs to teach the class, battled my way through dead-end links, secured the plug-in outlet, bypassed my excommunicating emails and was SURE I had shackled all of Hell’s attack strategies. Went upstairs to shower and get ready. Came back down just before it was time to join the meeting only to find that my computer had shut down on its own, erasing ALL the carefully set tabs, links and preparation… not sure if my WiFi failed or some sleep-mode on my laptop did the dastardly deed… but everything was gone! Defeated again! Instant tears. Embarrassment as I finally joined the meeting 8 minutes late after battling to get all my tabs and links back. You propped me up God, to get through the class with some semblance of grace, but my butterflies of determination to thwart Satan melted into a glob of formless wax. (I know EVERYONE struggles with these same things, so no “woe is me”… just chronicling “a day in the life of”….) So God, I will try again next week with a bit more knowledge of what can go wrong, and do my best to troubleshoot it… melted wax can be reshaped, perhaps into something even more beautiful for its malleability.