It was a comedy of errors, except there was nothing funny about it.

It all started days ago, when I suddenly stopped receiving any email at my main email address, although messages were still coming through at an email address I rarely use. I spent the better part of a day going through every Help and Troubleshooting site I could find, with no luck. The next day, I called the Geek Squad, spent part of the morning on hold, and the rest on the phone with an agent who checked everything out, did some rearranging, cleaned up and cleared out some cookies and corrupted files, and assured me the problem should be taken care of. Except it wasn’t. I still wasn’t getting any email.

I finally figured out what the problem was, and when I did, it took less than 15 minutes to fix it. Here’s the short version of what happened:

Email wasn’t coming through because the company hosting my website and email address suspended my account for lack of payment, which happened because the credit card I use for the recurring payment had expired, and the notices about the credit card, the overdue invoice, and the suspension of my account all landed in the Junk Folder on the email account I rarely use, even though that’s never happened before.

And yes, that is the short version.

One of the lessons I learned from this experience is that I need to incorporate “Check All Spam and Junk Folders” as a daily practice, which I’m now doing. Before, it fell into the category of “Things I know I should do more regularly, but actually do only occasionally – usually when someone alerts me to an email they sent but that I never received.” Another lesson is that I need to keep closer tabs on recurring payments, instead of assuming they will always recur, just as they have in the past.

Those are the easy ones.

I don’t know what to do about that frustrating, helpless feeling that came from knowing people were trying to get in touch with me, and had no way of knowing I wasn’t receiving – and therefore couldn’t respond to – their questions or requests. And I don’t know what to do with my embarrassment over how all-consuming this became while I was trying to find and fix the problem, especially in light of everything going on in the world today – things of much more significance and importance than my email issues.

So I’ll try to just shake it off, and treat this with the Serenity Prayer, which asks for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I hope that’s a message – and reminder – that will always get delivered.

February 13, 2021
©Betty Liedtke, 2021

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