Musings & Thoughts for Thursday, October 22, 2020, or: Foiled by the Computer Gremlin!

Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s just past noon here in New Hometown, Florida on Thursday, October 22, 2020. The temperature is currently 83˚F (29˚C) under mostly sunny skies. With the wind blowing from the east at 10 MPH (16 KM/H) and humidity at a sticky 76%, the feels-like temperature outside is 91˚F (33˚C). The forecast high is 85˚F (30˚C), and rain is expected in the evening hours.

If everything had worked out according to plan, the post you’re reading right now would not exist. Instead, you’d be reading a review of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. A review, I might add, that I worked on for over two hours on Microsoft Word and that, had it not been for a brief micro-outage that turned off my PC just as I was saving the file before coming to WordPress and prepping it as a proper blog post, would be published and enhanced with YouTube music videos and the 2002 album cover art.

Well, everything did not work out according to plan, and a micro-outage somehow screwed up my Word document that I could not open it. Word said elements of the file were “unreadable.” I’m not a dunce when it comes to using Word; I’ve been using it since the early 1990s at least. But I’m also not a tech wizard, and I have no idea how to use Text Recovery – or even access Text Recovery. So I went to File Manager, found the affected Document file, and deleted it.

So…ugh. Two. Hours. Of. My. Life. Wasted. All because my PC unexpectedly shut down. Just. Like. That.

I’ll probably try to rewrite the review tomorrow. I could try doing that right now instead of writing this rant-like post, but I’m so frustrated and irked by the loss of that damned file that I can’t get into a “reviewer’s mindset.” For that to happen, I need to be relaxed and clear-headed. And right now, obviously, I am neither relaxed nor clear-headed.

Ah, well. Maybe tomorrow, Dear Reader. Maybe tomorrow.

What I will do, though, is go take my shower – I spent much of my morning working on The Post That Isn’t There Now in my pajamas – and get dressed so I can at least go to “my” bench and get some fresh air while I calm down. If I just sit here and waste time playing stupid games on Facebook or stare at a blank Microsoft Word page while praying that I’ll conjure up part of a NaNoWriMo manuscript, I will be tempted to stay indoors and break my recently established routine of going out for at least 20-30 minutes and getting some exercise. I tend to get easily unmotivated when I run into an unforeseen – and usually unpleasant – obstacle, especially when I was so close to achieving my original goal. (In this case, publishing that now non-existent music album review.)

So, on that note, I’ll close for now and publish this before the Computer Gremlins strike again.