After months of working with a wonderful website designer and years of wanting this blog to look a certain way, SisterRain.net’s makeover was complete. Vowing to learn more about WordPress and make changes to this blog myself moving forward, I added a Contact Form on Monday all by myself. I had attempted to create the form a good part of Sunday afternoon but couldn’t get it the way I wanted it. The stubbornness that serves me well every day pushed me to try again. And I did it. It gave me a huge boost of confidence that maybe I can actually get better at tweaking this blog on my own.
A few hours later, my website was gone.
I tried to remain calm, I swear I did. I didn’t do too bad the first few hours. As it became apparent it wasn’t coming back on its own, panic set in. I tried all the tricks I have employed during the last few years as devastating things occurred in my life: it’s going to be okay, it’s not the end of the world, no one died, it’s not a health issue for anyone I love, it may not be gone forever, it’s only a blog.
My husband, calm, cool and collected in all situations not related to his beloved Seahawks, also tried his best to keep me grounded in what we did know at this point and what we didn’t. We are SO different in how we view things but at that moment I wanted so badly to BE him and feel and look at things the way he does. For twenty-seven years this hadn’t happened so it probably wasn’t going to happen now.
As I continuously attempted to talk myself down off the ledge, my stomach and my heart were not receiving the messages. For you see, this is not just a website to me. If no one ever reads it, it is still my life’s work. That’s a tall order for something that can be gone in a keystroke.
You would think waking up blind would teach you life’s ultimate lesson: I can, and will, change in a nanosecond. But for whatever reason, I am always surprised, as if I’ve never had my entire life completely shattered in the hours I slept one November night.
For all I have gone through, I would expect to be stronger, better able to handle whatever comes my way. And in some ways I am. But it seems no matter how shored up my Fortress of Fortitude, the pounding, relentless waves of life can erode it as quickly as I add reinforcements.
SisterRain.net is back in all her full glory and Sister Rain is getting there. When I renewed my domain name Monday night, there was a bug with the provider that caused my site to disappear. Yep, I heard it as I typed it. A bug, a virus, caused the loss of my site and my sight.
One has been fully restored, the other not so much. And I’m not quite back on solid ground myself. I am first and foremost grateful SisterRain.net is back in business. As for Sister Rain, she does get scared even though she tries really hard not to. And that does take a toll. But we both have survived to blog another day. Thank the tech gods, for where would I be without my net?
