Troubleshooting Life: How to Be Your Own Tech Support

FROM THE RYS ARCHIVES
A story worth revisiting

This story comes from an earlier chapter of my life (October 2014), when I was exploring the world and collecting stories along the way. I'm bringing it back because it still has something to say.

Many years ago I worked in a call centre doing tech support for a computer company. Angry, upset, and frustrated people would call in and tell me the issues they were having with their computers, and the tech support team would go through a few basic troubleshooting techniques to solve their problems.

There was always a basic order to solving computer-related issues, and I feel like this is how I am working my own life right now. Here's my tech-support approach...

1. Is the computer on? Are the lights on? Is it plugged in?

I have a pulse — check. I’m breathing — check. And the lights are indeed on most days. LOL. Sometimes a bit dimmer than on other days, but the power is on.

2. Turn it off, then on again

I think we tried this when Steve had his heart attack — that was definitely a reboot — and while thankfully the “computer” didn’t completely power off, his almost dying did set the switch to the OFF position temporarily, which allowed us to wake up and to realize that life is short.

3. Stop or uninstall a program running in the background

This kind of feels like where I am today. Work was the background program that I stopped running, and now I’m waiting to see if that creates changes in how things are operating.

Does my computer work better with fewer background apps?

Knowingly or not, I used to “blame” a lot of my issues on work — for example, I’ve had a hard day and I’m too tired to work out, or to make a good meal, or to be nice to my partner.

Let me be clear on the last point — I never intentionally acted like an uber bitch to Steve and then used work as the reason for my bad behaviour, but I have observed this behaviour in myself and in others all the time.

We seem to give the best of ourselves all day at work, just to be exhausted by the end of the day and have nothing left to give to our partners, the ones we claim to love more than anything in the world. So often we come home from a “hard day at work” and shit all over them.

Without the work grind to blame for my shortcomings, I’m reflecting on the changes in how I am acting and in how I’m feeling, and I think there has been a marked improvement in my “operating system,” to keep with the computer theme.

Anyhow, that seems to be where things are at, and I am discovering things about myself each day.