When technology fails

I always try to be cognizant of the fact that technology is not the end-all, be-all that society leads us to believe that it is.  Sometimes, it slips up.

Other times, it just downright fails.

I have 2 primary email accounts I use.  My google e-mail, which is what this-here blog runs on.  If you comment, email, whatever, this is where you're sending it to.  But I also have my everyday email.  The one my bills, my facebook, my twitter, pretty much everything important to me is run off of.  It's darn important.

So when the above-mentioned important email account suddenly stopped receiving emails on Thursday, I got somewhat worried.  I've had that account since 2007.  Countless accounts across the interwebs are accessible by that email.  Can I get it to work again?  Nope.  How come hotmail can manage to make my account "undeliverable"???

Despite my best efforts to not freak out, I allowed myself a moment.  You know that kind of moment.  The kind where you 100% lose your shizz for no good reason.  I knew it really wasn't a big deal, but there was a certain amount of emotional attachment to that particular email address.  It was my alumni account for my first undergraduate degree.  I cherished how smart and accomplished I felt whenever I wrote it out.  YES I survived 4 years of college, out of state AND with my life a mess, and I have this email account to show for it.

Okay, maybe it didn't mean that much (although all of the above is true)... but I still loved it dearly.

So after I lost it for  second, I decided to take swift action and regroup.  I moved on over to yahoo, and set up a new "darned important" things email account.  Slowly but slowly, I started to remember just which accounts happen to be linked to that account, and have started the switching over process.  I realized that my Twitter was connected to that email, and found out I had missed tweets because of the email outage.  Sorry guys, if you happened to tweet me during that time.  I wasn't ignoring you, I just didn't know said tweets existed.

It's times like these that I remember that as great and useful as technology is, we always need to have a back-up plan.  We need to know how to function without all of the short-cuts that email, online bill pay, paperless statements, etc... provide.  This is probably why I always want to learn the skills that are becoming less and less important to society.  Gardening, cooking from scratch, sewing, and generally being self-sufficient are important skills to have when technology is on the fritz.  They are skills that help me to appreciate my grandmother and my great-grandmothers, who had to make do with what they had, and who were always able to make something out of nothing.

Because in a culture that values leaving as little waste behind as possible through the paperless movement, when technology fails, you have to re-create everything out of nothing.