I almost had a nervous breakdown yesterday evening 'cos my laptop shut itself down and didn't start again. For almost an hour, I tried to make it work again, using all sorts of totally useless techniques (begging, threatening, praying, you name it). Tired out by the effort and the panic, I went to bed, and, needless to say, slept horribly just to wake up at 6.30 am and almost run straight out of bed to my laptop (I guess you could call it a run if my appartment was that big). And, surprisingly, it worked again. Made some weird noises and took about five times as long as it usually does, but it functions again.
While desperately trying to sleep and calm myself down, I started thinking about why this mishap made me so anxious. After all, it's just a stupid machine, and I have most of my files secured on an external hard drive anyway (all files except, of course, a presentation I have to do tomorrow and which I wrote on my laptop, and not on my office computer, which I use mostly for my work stuff these days). I was trying to persuade myself with all kinds of arguments why this wasn't such a big deal: it's an old laptop anyway, I have copies of all the pics and the music I downloaded, it might work again the next morning - you get the picture.
By the second hour of tossing around in my bed, I got mad at myself for letting such a thing worry me. I thought about stoicism and how their exercises consist in making you indifferent to exactly those kind of stupid situations. I also remembered an episode that Rousseau tells in his autobiography: He is anxiously awaiting a letter of some sort, a very important letter for him, and when it finally arrives, he nearly freaks out by excitement. But that's when good old Rousseau says to himself: I shouldn't let such a thing get me so excited and anxious, either way, it doesn't matter. So he doesn't open the letter, but instead puts it on his desk, spends the day and evening doing whatever he is usually doing, sleeps sound as a pound just to get up in the morning, well rested. He finds the letter sitting on his desk, opens it very quietly and finds that it has a positive response to whatever he was waiting for. Geez, Jean-Jacques, I guess should learn from you. But then I might just well be a freekin' nut-case as you were.
While desperately trying to sleep and calm myself down, I started thinking about why this mishap made me so anxious. After all, it's just a stupid machine, and I have most of my files secured on an external hard drive anyway (all files except, of course, a presentation I have to do tomorrow and which I wrote on my laptop, and not on my office computer, which I use mostly for my work stuff these days). I was trying to persuade myself with all kinds of arguments why this wasn't such a big deal: it's an old laptop anyway, I have copies of all the pics and the music I downloaded, it might work again the next morning - you get the picture.
By the second hour of tossing around in my bed, I got mad at myself for letting such a thing worry me. I thought about stoicism and how their exercises consist in making you indifferent to exactly those kind of stupid situations. I also remembered an episode that Rousseau tells in his autobiography: He is anxiously awaiting a letter of some sort, a very important letter for him, and when it finally arrives, he nearly freaks out by excitement. But that's when good old Rousseau says to himself: I shouldn't let such a thing get me so excited and anxious, either way, it doesn't matter. So he doesn't open the letter, but instead puts it on his desk, spends the day and evening doing whatever he is usually doing, sleeps sound as a pound just to get up in the morning, well rested. He finds the letter sitting on his desk, opens it very quietly and finds that it has a positive response to whatever he was waiting for. Geez, Jean-Jacques, I guess should learn from you. But then I might just well be a freekin' nut-case as you were.
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