This day has just stunk. Everything about it has been rubbish. Pretty much everything that I touched has turned to crap right before me.
Yesterday I had to take my car to get road certified for the year. The mechanic said I needed to replace the tire, so I did but when I was driving it last night a warning indicator came on. I pulled over, Googled the error, it was weird, tried a few things and when I restarted the car it was gone so I got to my destination.
Then on my way home last night it came on again, so I had to take it back to the service station because something they did had probably caused an issue.
Bright and early this morning, I take the car back to the mechanic and about 45 minutes later they called back and told me there was nothing wrong with the car. They said that I had obviously touched a button on the middle console (that I didn’t even know was there) and that caused the error.
I was sure they were wrong, so I took the care out for a spin and fifteen minutes in, up pops the error. I drive the car back to the mechanic, don’t turn it off and go in to show them the error message.
They hook the car up to their diagnostics computer while it’s still running and the computer says “no”. The diagnostics computer literally says that the error we’re looking at isn’t actually appearing on the console.
I’m not very car literate but to me, that’s either a very good thing (it’s a false indicator) or a very bad thing (something catastrophic and expensive has failed).
I left the car with them and made my way into the office.
That’s a complete gong show at the moment. The project I’m working on is finishing on Friday so everyone has taken leave of their senses and is in full panic mode. At times like that, I struggle to maintain my composure because my natural instinct is to tell people to remove their heads from their rectums.
So I spent much of the day babysitting people in the office before getting the call to come collect my car because it’s “ready to go.” That fills me with dread.
I pack up a bit early, hop on the bus and grab the car. The mechanic explains that he found a mechanic’s note on some Lexus site about the exact issue I’m having with the same model. Basically, the All-Wheel Drive is so sensitive that having one new front tire and slightly worn front tire throws off the computer that tracks the tire differential because the actual circumference of the two tires is slightly different due to wear and after like 4km of driving, the differential falls outside tolerance.
No idea why the onboard computer doesn’t register that fault, but who cares.
The answer was for them to swap the back tires to the front, do another wheel alignment and it was good to go.
I took it out for a bit of drive, no dramas and I thought, “Today is looking up.”
Then the emails from work started this evening and things just started to slide back into crazytown. I tend to ignore work emails after about 6pm, but one or two needed immediate replies with things like, “No.” or “That’s not smart.” and my favourite, “You can do that, the rest of us won’t act stupid and we’ll get the work done.”
Then came the absolute topper.
I sat down to write my daily email. I had a good topic and while the words flowed nicely, it was a bit long and it took me more time to write than it normally does.
When I finished, I hit “Next” within ActiveCampaign… and it took me back to the “Choose Your Template” screen instead of the “Send Now” screen.
Yep, my entire email was gone. Lost forever. Buh Bye.
So that was the topper to a really below average day.
But you know what, I’m racing to get this email out before midnight so that I can close the book on this wretched day and contain the misery.
What’s the lesson in this for you?
I dunno man, I’m trying here. LOL.
The takeaway is that sometimes in this online business caper, technology fails – in the two plus years of writing these daily emails, this is just the third time that I’ve lost an email I’d written.
And every time it has happened, I’ve sat right back down and I wrote a new email straight away.
You could think of it like getting back on the horse after you fall off or whatever, but I think it’s just a matter of committing myself to doing this daily. The easiest thing in the world tonight would have been to say, “Bugger that, I’m skipping a day.”
But I don’t do that. I send an email every day. That’s why I have committed myself to do and so I do it.
Even when I’m having a crappy day and the internet gods conspire against me, I still push through and do what I have committed myself to doing.
Consistency and commitment – to me, those are my two secrets to why I’ve been successful and the best part is, they don’t take any skill, you can do it too!