A Moment Of Illumination

At 2.10 pm today I felt utterly miserable. I'd gone down early to a lecture theatre in which I was to give a briefing about an hour or so later, intending to set up my laptop for the accompanying slide show. When I opened the laptop I was puzzled by the blankness of the screen. I'd not shut it down before setting off, thinking that this would speed up the process of preparation. And now, for no good reason, there was nothing to prepare. This had never happened before and I seriously wondered whether the hard disk had crashed or something. (I have no understanding of what that actually means, but I know it's bad, and this looked bad.)

Since I was due to teach for an hour at 2.20 I couldn't hang around and be miserable, so I went off to the classroom to be miserable instead. Fortunately, teaching the bracingly miserable Wide Sargasso Sea helped take my mind off my worries, until I wound up five minutes early to rush down to the lecture theatre to see if the screen had lit up. It hadn't.

Some colleagues began arriving for the briefing and I sort of threw myself on their mercy, pitifully explaining my dilemma and darkest fears. Partly to my mild irritation, but mainly to my huge delight, they didn't take it at all seriously and suggested I simply pressed the button that turns the laptop on for some twenty seconds in order to switch it off (the lights on the side indicated it was on despite the complete lack of action on screen) and then switch it on again. I was gratified when pressing the button actually did succeed in switching the thing off and more than gratified when switching it on again actually switched it on for real: yes, something came up on the screen and the misery and attendant panic were officially over.

So why am I recalling those feelings now? Dear Reader, there is little to match the overwhelming relief of realising that one's darkest fears of not being able to function in any meaningful way in one's place of work have simply evaporated. And I am enjoying the echoes of that relief even as I peer at the screen that caused me so much anxiety just this afternoon.