Ick. It’s 11:30, and I’m so frustrated I could spit. Earlier tonight I met my friend Justin to check the status of my laptop. (I spilled hot tea on it a few days ago, and we put it in rice to dry out.) Well, it’s a long story, but basically the keyboard works–with one small exception. It “thinks” one of the shift keys is permanently depressed. (I think I might be thanks to this situation.) THAT MEANS IT STARTS IN SAFE MODE (WHICH IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REBOOT A MAC AND HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY, MOM), SO IT HAS LIMITED FUNCTION, AND IT ALSO TYPES IN ALL CAPS, WHICH IS–OBVIOUSLY–ANNOYING AS SHIT.

After over an hour of resetting this and reprogramming that, Justin got the laptop to type in regular lowercase–SOMETIMES–but it still starts in safe mode, and one of the shift keys doesn’t work. So I called Apple, and now I have an appointment tomorrow to have a technician check it out. Most likely, I’ll need a new keyboard.

As Justin said, could be better, could be worse.

Believe it or not, none of this really upset me. I actually took it all in stride. Shit happens. It’s not the end of the world. But when I came home and tried to backup some files and log myself out of my online accounts–and couldn’t–I nearly flew off the handle. Why the hell does everything have to be so complicated?! What did I do to deserve this?

Finally, I walked away, reasoning, Just leave everything alone, Marcus. Trust the professionals. You don’t have to control every little thing.

So now I’m in bed, blogging on my phone, trying to chill out. Really, it’s been a good day. This afternoon I made progress on my photo organizing project. Check out one of my all-time favorite pictures, from summer camp (2000) with my friend Matt.

Later I went by myself to see a movie, Small Foot, an animated film about a group of Big Feet who don’t believe in humans until one of them discovers one of us. It’s super cute; totally adorable. The tagline for the movie is “There’s been a big myth-understanding.”

For no planned reason, the two photos I just posted feature one person carrying another. Hum. Maybe there’s a lesson there, in the repetition. I’ve spent so much of life afraid something will go wrong. So much of life mistrusting others and even life itself, that I imagined only I could do things “right.” This has been my personal myth, and it’s why little things like a broken laptop set me off. They force me to let go, to surrender, to accept help. This is a good thing but not an easy thing to do, to admit there’s been a big myth-understanding, that the world ISN’T a big, scary place, and one person DOESN’T have to carry its weight on his shoulders, that it’s OKAY to accept help.