It’s really easy to go through life frustrated. Especially if you try hard and take responsibility for things.
People who always accomplish things are also frequently frustrated.
- “Why isn’t this working?”
- “Why is Bob so lazy?”
- “I’ve been waiting hours for this package and it’s still not here!”
- “I guess I’ll do everything myself!”
Because you want to achieve your goals, because you’re trying to be your best, you get frustrated when things don’t go as planned.
Which is where I was at the end of the day yesterday.
Then I got shot in the eye.
Bluehost Drops The Ball
You should be reading a post right now about how today is the final days to sign up for LawyerSmack.
The last day to lock in the current annual price forever.
You’d be reading about how awesome the community is. Cool stuff emerging from it.
Read how people refer cases to each other. Exchange Secret Santa gifts (19 states & 2 countries!). Collaborate on issues.
You’d be reading about the exclusive member benefits you receive as a member. If you use a couple of the benefits, your membership pays for itself.
Instead, when you visit Lawyersmack.com you get this:
My hosting company, Bluehost, dropped the ball.
I know because people have been emailing me and contacting me on Twitter and complaining they can’t join.
Bluehost Drops The Ball (Again Actually)
Right as I launched LawyerSmack back in December, they screwed up my hosting too. Right after I gave them more money!
I paid for more server resources, more bandwidth, better service…and all my websites broke. #fml
In the move to the new server, they broke everything. Whoops.
Which wouldn’t have been a big deal since I had scheduled it almost two weeks before I launched LawyerSmack.
Yet of course, they ended up moving things to the new server, and breaking everything, on launch day. Whoops.
Credit where credit is due, they hustled to get things fixed. But it took awhile (and some favors) to get things escalated to that level.
But here we are, on (theoretically) the final sign up day for awhile…and things are broken again.
Specifically, the SSL certificate (the tech you need to safely transmit passwords, credit cards, etc) over the web was set to auto-renew yesterday…and it didn’t.
I contacted Bluehost and they were like “Whoops!”
It was supposed to be fully reset by this morning…and it isn’t. What now?
Frustrated? How about getting shot in the eye!
I was mollified last night that things were going to be fixed this morning (I was wrong). But I was still frustrated.
My 8 year old son suggests a Nerf war to blow off some steam.
Excellent! Let’s shoot things!
My son already had a number of Nerf guns, being an 8 year old boy. But for Christmas, he got this bad mamma-jamma.
A battery-powered, multiple clip, auto-firing Nerf machine gun. Yes, we are awesome parents.
We’re running around the house and shooting at each other and other things.
Then from across the room, he lines up his shot, takes aim at me, and fires.
Slow motion, Matrix-time kicks in. I can see the dart hurtling towards my face at 35 mph (they’re really that fast).
I try to to turn, but too late. The rubber bullet hits directly in the middle of my left eye.
“FUCK!”
I drop my gun and spin to the ground. Unbelievable pain. I’m not sure if I can see.
I can hear my wife and son saying something to me but I waive them off. All I can do is hold my eye keep from screaming.
I can hear my son crying, he knows he did it and feels bad. I grit my teeth and open my eye.
I can see, but it’s all blurred to hell. Close eye again.
Wife consoles son, then takes care of me (Lifehack: marry a nurse or other medical professional).
I lay down in bed. I’ve got an icepack on my eye. My cornea is scratched. My eye hurts like hell. The final push for LawyerSmack is screwed up after repeated screw-ups outside of my control.
I am at peak frustration and simmering anger. Then my son brings me a note.
Kids take this type of thing hard.
Shooting me in the eye was a complete accident, but he can’t help feeling responsible. It hurts his little heart to think he might have injured me.
Which of course makes me feel like garbage.
I snuggle him up next to me and tell him it was an accident. Everything is okay. Daddy will be okay.
Control The Controlables
There is so much around us we can’t actually control.
We want to control it. We think we need to control it. We might even think we control it.
But more often than not, so much of life is out of our control.
- Bluehost screwed up my hosting/ The Lawyersmack launch has been rocky. I can always do it another day and extend the sign up period.
- I got shot in the eye. I’ve always got another one. I wrote this through a combination of dictation and editing with one eye open.
When things like this happen, things outside of your control, you can’t let them control you.
You control your attitude. You control how you respond to events. You control your outlook and perspective.
My eye will be better in a week or so. I’ll get everything squared away with LawyerSmack and extend the signup period. It’s not the end of the world.
These events certainly aren’t going to control how I react and communicate with my son.
There’s probably stuff like this happening in your life all the time too. Large and small events try and take control of you.
And at times they will. It happens to the best of us. But remember to take a step back and look at what really matters.
Look at your family, look at your friends. Think about how you want to treat them. How you want them to treat you.
Spend your effort and willpower on controlling the things in your life you actually have control over. How you respond to things is largely your choice.
Make a good one.
