Goodbye October

October has been a real test for me and I'm not sad to see it go.
I know that on a large scale, visible to everyone it might not seem like it's been too bad.-I know I've had worse.
And any single event would have been taken lightly.
But every week, every day, something else has popped up.
Catastrophe after catastrophe. Fights, technically difficulties, and crappy doctor's appointments.

And I've handled it all very spectacularly. I wanted to beak down, give up, give in, but I haven't.
What this month has really brought to me though is doubts. It's made me feel horrible about myself and every choice I've ever made.

I doubt my ability to mother one of my sons--he's driving me nuts in a way I didn't know was possible, even find myself not taking his side. And I find myself wondering if I'm the right parent for him.

I doubt my ability to be a good wife--my husband and I are living such different schedules and I'd rather pity myself than try to help the fragile relationship we have. And the fights and frigidity follow.

I doubt my ability to be a friend--I ignored her when she reached out to me and can't or just won't find time in my life for her. Maybe I'm just not cut out for friendship.

I doubt my faith. I can't get over myself enough to place trust where it belongs and just give my life over. I try and blame the church, but I know better.

All of this is hard. I've been though it all before in varying shapes and usually come out on top(-ish).
 But I always knew, 100%, without doubt that there was still one thing I was good at.
I was good at school.
I took real pride in what I was doing and in the kind of student I was.
And maybe if it was just one teacher or one assignment, I wouldn't have noticed.
But no, not in October. In October, every single one of my teachers have called me out, either out loud, in class or in semi-personal notes telling me that I'm just not that good at what I'm doing.
I don't write well, I don't comprehend complex material, I talk too much, and that my thoughts might be ok if someone else were expressing them.
What feels like the final nail in the coffin was a comment left for me tonight.
I was being honest with the teacher when I told her that I'm not sure I understood the reason for analyzing and dissecting literature, that it seemed to take away some of the pleasure of reading. Her response was that I'd just be better off doing book-clubs. That I wasn't quite literature material.

And it hurt.
I know how stupid it sounds, but I try so hard at this and the people who I had come to really respect tell me I shouldn't even bother.

I  know I can't be the best at everything. Heck, I know I can't even do everything! I don't have aspirations of being a super-mom.
Right now I'd settle for mediocre-mom. And wife. And friend. And follower.

I know that it will all blow over, that life has it's ups and downs. But right now it's feeling plenty down.

But don't you worry about me. I'll just plaster that fake smile across my face and pretend that everything's fine.
And eventually it will be.

I just hope that there aren't any more October's in my near future.

If it ain't broke...

I have flash drives.

Lots of flash drives.

All over my house.

I even carry one on my key chain.

I took some advice from someone who spends way too much time looking after me, I decided that it just might be time to consolidate.

This caretaker happened to come across a great deal and bought me a big flash drive that would hold all of my work. I spent much time gathering said flash drives and getting many semesters worth of very hard work onto one flash drive. I was backed up and it felt good. I erased all the baby drives and sent some off to school with my children and had the rest laying around as decorations.

I carried the big daddy drive with me everywhere always carefully backing up and work I did- I learned the backup lesson after The Great Computer crash of '09.

Last Wednesday, in a computer lab at school, I inserted my handy dandy flash drive into the computer to save the work I had just completed, and something wasn't right. The computer threw up a mean red flag and told me that the drive wasn't inserted. My eyes certainly disagreed as I could see the flash drive protruding from the massive black tower, but again the computer said that it wasn't there. I passed it off as a quirky computer thing, ejected the flash drive, and went off to my next class.

If you know me at all you know that I am The Great Procrastinator and it will come to no surprise that I ended up doing a great amount of work last minute this Sunday. Part of this work is a notebook project that involves busy work and wasted paper. I wasn't in the mood to waste my ink (couldn't anyway, don't have any) or my paper so I pulled out the big daddy handy dandy flash drive, hooked it up to my computer, and my precious laptop informs me that there is no drive inserted. Then it prompts me to format the drive. Then it tells me that it not able to be formatted.

And It Will Not Open!

Six semesters worth of work (minus that which was lost in the crash) IS GONE!!

For sure if it's there I don't know how to retrieve it.

And my heart dropped into my stomach.

This is not good.

This may not be fixable.

I might have lost so much inspired work on the whimsy of a flash drive.

I backed-up! I did what I was supposed to!

The stupid flash drive did not hold up it's end of the bargain.

So now I'm sitting here, hurt once again by a computer. I just about feel violated. Mainly I feel really bad and very upset about my work just disappearing.

But I have learned a new lesson. Backing up isn't good enough. You need to back up your back up and in several different places. And I'm sure that once I start getting the hang of that, something else will change, I'll lose even more work, and will have yet another hard computer lesson to learn.