Peace After a Stressful Day

"All's Well That Ends Well," as the Bard Said

My day began with stress but ended in peace. I find that when I'm stressed, nature soothes me. Sometimes just walking the two blocks to my mailbox at dusk will calm me down. Sometimes just looking at a sunset works. Or seeing a gorgeous sky framed by trees.

So what stressed me out today?

For the two days before today my cable connection that controls the television, the landline and the internet was faulty. My connection would drop while I was trying to send an email, comment on a post, or save a post in progress. You know how annoying that can be, especially during a blogging challenge when I need to get so much done online quickly. Although I don't watch much TV, for the little time I did the sound and picture became distorted every few seconds.

When I went to call Charter to report the problem, my phone (Charter powered, of course) wouldn't work properly.  The person that answered couldn't hear me. I had to pull out my rarely used cell phone to get through. That was Tuesday. The earliest a technician could come out was today between 1 and 2 pm. They said they would call to confirm and cancel if no one answered. So I kept my cell phone on and took it to my bedroom last night. I usually keep it in my purse, turned off.

Also last night before bed I discovered my primary website was offline. It's never been offline before.  I couldn't get it up and I couldn't get into my administrative panel. I didn't want to try calling tech support on my little mobile flip phone because I don't know how to put it on speaker phone -- a must for tech support calls. I couldn't rely on the landline to work. I hadn't been able to post my blog last night, either.

Even my little brother suffered phone frustration.
From family photo collection

Last night Charter called my cell phone and the landline simultaneously and I confirmed the appointment. Today at the proper time both phones rang at the same time again. I answered the cell and the person on the other end's voice was so distorted I couldn't understand a word and he couldn't seem to hear me. Then the line went dead. My husband answered the landline and talked to the human to confirm the appointment time. 2:00 came and went. At 2:30 I got really tense.

I called Charter again, but their call volume was too high and they weren't taking anymore calls for a while. The connection had appeared to be working better, so I went to their website and waited half an hour for a chat rep to come on line. He told me first that the appointment had been canceled because it hadn't been confirmed. Not true. Then he said he no longer detected a problem with the connection. I thought maybe they had resolved it since I hadn't had problems in the morning or afternoon. I was still quite unhappy that no one notified me of the cancellation or of the fact they thought the problem was resolved. I expressed my dissatisfaction in the handy survey I had to fill out after the chat session ended.

Resolving My Website Issue

Fortunately, I was able to get my website issue solved quickly. After bracing myself for a long tech support session and fortifying myself with pizza to quell my hunger pains, I call my wonderful web host at Siteground. They had my site back up in seconds. They told me the problem was a faulty update for the Heartbeat plug-in, they changed the file name, and the website came up immediately. I love their tech support people.

So What Now?

My website is back up, and that was the biggest issue for my business. After I began writing this post, though, I noticed my internet connection cutting in and out again. I tried to watch TV while I ate my pizza, and the people on the screen turned into monsters every few seconds and their voices sounded like they had a bad cell phone connection. Since my internet and phone had worked earlier, I thought maybe our ancient television was telling us to replace it. But then when the internet went haywire again, I knew maybe Charter hadn't solved my problem after all or I had a new problem. I'm not looking forward to getting back to them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I lost my connection several times while writing this post.

The trees in the photo above have seen their share of stress and though gravely wounded have so far survived. I'm thankful my three-day physical headache had vanished by the time I woke up this morning. It left me better able to face this  stressful day without breaking. Perhaps when I wake up tomorrow, my Charter headache will have disappeared. But I'm not counting on it. I'll take it one day at a time.

Has anything stressed you out lately?

This post is for Day 6 in the Ultimate Blog Challenge.