I don’t know if there’s anything more frustrating than wrestling with technology. Okay, maybe wrestling with technology while blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back. I guess that would be worse?

But dealing with technological glitches with eyes open and hands free is plenty frustrating, thank you very much.

Speaking of which. I’m currently in the end stages of formatting Melissa’s Dear Meli book. If you happened to notice that “end stages” sounds very much like a terminal diagnosis, then you are right, my friends!

I’m mildly Word literate. Word, as in the computer program. Not words in general. I’m okay with those. But Word is a big, baffling machine. I know enough to do a bunch of basic things.

But when it comes to formatting a book? With the special margins, page break layouts, widow and orphan control (that’s a real formatting thing! not about human children!), and first page/even page/odd page headers and footers?

Yikes!

I have successfully formatted four of our books so far, so I felt mildly confident going into this one. Much like an accountant going for a meeting with a client who has a habit of stashing receipts inside the pockets of pants, coats, and briefcases. I knew it was going to be a bit hectic, but I thought I could get the job done.

And I was right, at first. I managed to get most of the book in good shape. Margins justified? Check! Hyphenation complete? Check! Non-human widows and orphans under control? Check!

And then it came time for the page numbers.

Page numbers are a tricky beast. In my accountant analogy, page numbers are the receipts hiding in coat pockets stashed in the back of a closet. Or worse, nestled in pockets of coats given away to a local clothes drive last year.

You are going to have a verrrry hard time reconciling your books with a receipt stashed away in what is now someone else’s coat.

And that’s what formatting the page numbers felt like. They were fine for the first few chapters or so. But then the torture fun began.

Here’s how it went. I would assume I had successfully formatted the page numbers for a chapter. But then the page numbers would disappear in previous chapters. Or they would show up on blank pages where I had already taken them out.

The accountant was filing receipts only to have them disappear before their very eyes. Or worse, filling out tax forms that then reformatted with someone else’s information. It was crazy making. Enough to send me and my little accountant running for the hills in abject failure and despair.

But here’s the thing about me and my frustration with technological glitches. When a problem emerges, I double down. I consult my notes from previous formatting fixes. I search for YouTube videos that promise to alleviate my issue.

Except I tried the suggested fixes and they didn’t work. So I doubled down some more. Meanwhile, my frustration was rising to uninhabitable levels. Meaning it was getting pretty hard to live inside my own skin.

I’ve experienced this before. Uninhabitable levels of frustration. And I knew that the best thing to do, when things start to feel impossible, is to simply step away.

I knew that’s what I needed to do. But I couldn’t do it. Although, even in my I-know-I-need-to-step-away-but-I-just-can’t state, something was different. I felt just a wee bit of distance from the frustration.

I was watching the accountant rifling through coat pockets in the client’s storage unit, empathizing with their plight. I know it’s tough, friend. I feel your pain. This is craaaaaaaazy exasperating, right? Oh, and you’re not going to find anything in that coat. They never wore it because they thought it made their butt look too big. 

Even though I had some slight empathy and distance from the accountant, I still wasn’t able to stop my task. Finally, I told Melissa about my dilemma. I told her that I knew I needed to step away, but I couldn’t.

Somehow, this broke the spell. Having that extra set of eyes on – and empathy for – my predicament allowed me to step away.

Not that it was easy. I had to pry the accountant’s hands off an ancient movie ticket retrieved from the pocket of a musty old bomber jacket, pointing out that it was not the receipt they were searching for, and that doubling down was only going to give them a heart attack.

In other words, even after stepping away, I could feel my halted formatting project whirring inside me. I could see little page numbers dancing inside my head, taunting me.

But I stayed strong and stayed away.

That night, I sat down to meditate. About halfway through my meditation, an idea popped in my head. I had been using the Word docs of previous books to format the current one. Perhaps I needed to start over with a fresh template, the one I used when I started the very first book.

I didn’t try it right away. It was the end of the day, and I was done. The accountant had gone home.

But the next morning? I downloaded a fresh template and started entering the contents of the Dear Meli book. And it worked. Those page numbers behaved beautifully. The receipts emerged from all the pockets in the house. They even emerged from the pockets of coats that had been given away in last year’s clothes drive!

Occasionally I hit a snag in entering the material into the template, but because the template was new, and not burdened with all the previous formatting changes, the snags were relatively easy to fix.

I can only imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t stepped away when I did. It probably would have taken me months to format the book. Or months to not format the book and realize I needed to start over, but only after dedicating hours and hours of time (and frustration) to a futile endeavor.

I like to think that my greater objectivity about my frustration in this case will mean I can step away even faster in the future. Or at least tell Melissa about it sooner!

Either way, my little accountant has been spared a heart attack. And for that I am grateful.

And now it’s your turn. How do you handle frustration? Are you good at stepping away when needed? Any tricks and/or tips for the rest of us? Share your comments below!

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