“There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen.

We had to cancel our trip to Bishop Gibbons and move it to next week.

I have too many appointments and tests, and Maria is swamped with orders for her scarves and potholders.

Today, I was swamped by troubles that weren’t’ really troubles at all but reflections of a society that has given its soul to software and machines.

We live in a distracting, intense, and unsettling world, and grounding tools like meditation, contemplating, and solitude are ever more important to me. Survival is more accessible, and peace of mind is scarce.

Our new technologies have mushroomed way ahead of us and keep grabbing the functions of humanity and pushing them aside.

I deal with machines all day that used to be people I could call. I don’t like it. But it’s too late to fight it or stop it.

All day long, I felt under siege by the complexity of life in America.

It began early; I got an e-mail saying my new foot braces would cost $1,500, and the money was due Monday before casting. I don’t know about you, but I am not so spiritually advanced that I didn’t take some deep breaths.

This was a mistake. After a few phone calls and e-mails, my health insurance pays all but $230. But it took a while to sort out—new software problem. And it was always a human being who fixed it.

 

(When the sun came out, Maria walked in the woods.)

That high bill got my heart pumping.

Creativity is a tricky thing. I can easily get rattled or unstrung by news like that; I have to get back to a mind that can work for me.

It just didn’t seem to end.

I got six telephone calls from doctor’s offices spelling out their Covid-19 policies, and I only have appointments for one of them. New software problems, they said. The voicemail messages were long.

There was very little quiet in my world today.

I tried to pre-register for the one appointment I had, but it refused to accept my birthday or zip code. New software problems, said the doctor’s office, happens every new year.

A blog reader was struggling because Paypal didn’t cancel her existing payments, and we had to change passwords several times to check what happened – it was a Paypal problem, and it’s fixed.

(Supper For The Sheep)

It took a good while. Switching passwords can be complex. It seems it was a software problem.

I got a nearly hysterical identity theft report from my credit card company which turned out to be a false alarm about a card I stopped using years ago. That took an hour to investigate and clear up.

They said my available credit had been reduced by 70 percent. The card was canceled years ago. Software problem, it turned out.

I got five Covid messages from two different doctors who seemed to think I had upcoming appointments I didn’t have.

I was looking forward to dinner with friends and planned a neat dinner. They had to call and cancel – hopefully, we can do it tomorrow.

(We have fallen in love with our town’s new Shift food truck, parked three days a week at the brewery in the middle of town. They make the best wood-fired pizza I’ve ever had, and their healthy and delicious salads knock me out. They are on to something good and big.)

I got four requests for dog support that were essentially medical and clinical issues – very extreme ones, gory and disturbing- that were way out of my wheelhouse and sent all kinds of alarm bells ringing.

I said no to each one. Sometimes what you don’t do is as important as what you do.

At least my application software worked.

I got a $350 bill for some blog work that shocked me, and I asked that it be checked. Sorry, it came back as an $85 bill, but there were some new software problems.

I keep thinking of much older people living alone who are confronted with this complex software and other technical problems. Is it my imagination, or are these systems overwhelmed, and are they choking us?

Today, I felt overwhelmed. There was no escaping it; it finds you.

One bright spot today is that with our dinner canceled,  I will stream a Bluegrass Band tonight that I’m eager to hear, the Ruta Beggers, on Cafe Lena’s live stream at 7 p.m. I rushed to the bookstore and ought an Ann Cleaves mystery I had never read.

Maria and I went to the Shift food stand to pick up a small all-green/garden salad pizza. I’m going to meditate.

This day –  familiar to many people reading this – got me wondering if life was straightforward for people like us 100 years ago.  Was it really simpler? I would say no, from reading old Farmer’s journals, a hobby of mine.

Storms that we had last week killed a lot of animals and people.

We have it easier than any generation before us say the historians, but I imagine we are under as much or more stress if less danger.

We’ve surrendered much of our lives to new technologies without limit or accountability. People are always touting cool new technology but rarely stopping to think about how we will use it or if we really need it.

Learning to stay calm and grounded is now a survival tool. I keep fighting to get my space, solitude, and privacy back, but I know it’s too late to turn around. Mother Nature might eventually do this for us; she seems much more significant than our software world. She can still turn it off.

I woke up this morning practically singing, “I am so happy to be alive,” and you know what? I still feel that way. It was a quiet night with reading, music, M, aria, and delicious wood-fired pizza.

I’ll take some time off tonight, and when tomorrow comes, I will be ready. : Life is good.