February 10, 2021

I tried to instal the MacOS update called Big Sur. It -- I learned this term yesterday -- bricked my laptop. After several hours of trying to get it to work, I called Apple Support, and after another hour on the phone with them, they had me erase my Mac. Delete everything on it. Now it's operating back on Mojave and prompting me once more to update. 

I was proud of myself, though. I didn't throw a tantrum about it. Luckily, my husband brought two lap tops with us to Colorado. So I used his personal one yesterday while he used his work one. Otherwise, I would've been fucked. Also, I work primarily out of Dropbox, Google Drive, and my external hard drive. So, other than the applications I'll have to redownload, I don't think I lost anything important. But even still, I'm surprised my levels of frustration stayed within coping range. 

I've been using a daily mood tracker app on my phone, and before yesterday, I had five "good" days in a row. (The levels are rad, good, meh, bad, and awful.) I think that impacts my response to bricked computer. Although, I will say, even though I concede that the past week or so has been generally good. I don't feel like I'm doing great. In COVID times, the good days are closer to meh than they are to rad. 

I'm trying to get around to saying something about how maybe your last five days make all the difference in the world to how you act today. That maybe it's inaccurate to say that so-and-so would do such-and-such in this-or-that situation without giving the context of what there last week had been like. 

I've still not exactly figured out what makes a day or week a good one or meh one for me. (I rarely say I've had a bad day, but meh feels pretty bad. I don't want a whole life of meh.) That's a big reason I'm using the app -- trying to get some data. But it scares me to think of having a bad week slide. ("Scared" is probably a bit pathetic in this context. What I mean is I worry about my mood slipping out of my control.) It makes each new bump in the road harder to deal with. It can become a spiral. I'm not sure it's possible to spiral in the upwards direction though. Like compounding good breaks into some kind of euphoria. I'll keep you posted.