Always Look Again

In the past week, I got an email saying my website was down. I didn’t pay much attention to it as it happens occasionally and it’s restored without any intervention from me.

I assumed it was one of those times and did nothing. A day later, I got another message saying it was still down. It was taking longer than usual but again I felt it would resolve itself.

Not being an expert in coding, I found the FAQ really daunting and mind boggling. It was easier to bury my head in the sand and hope the hosting site would resolve the issue. I knew it wasn’t from my end considering I didn’t make any technical changes to the site.

Eventually I called an expert to resolve the issue but they didn’t get a chance to immediately take it on. As I waited for news on the issue, a friend told me he saw the error message when he tried to log on.

I realised that I could no longer bury my head in the sand, or be intimidated simply because I didn’t have coding experience. I definitely couldn’t wait any longer to resolve the issue. Denying that there was a problem, to be resolved, was no longer an option.

A part of me knew Sunday was coming and hundreds of subscribers would be disappointed; and I would get messages from those who expect to get a link to the week’s post. I needed to deal with the issue sooner or later, and the choice was mine to make.

All of these weighed on my mind so I decided to bite the bullet as they say. I looked for the email and tried to digest the technical jargon. Failure and not understanding the content were not viable options so I didn’t panic as I prepared to figure the issue out.

I couldn’t even log on as an Admin and that scared me because I feared four years of weekly posts had disappeared into thin air with no way to access them.

Within minutes, I saw another email from the hosting site which had a link to open the website in a recovery mode. Once I did this, I began to work through the possible issues and within minutes, I figured out what had caused the ‘FATAL’ error to my website and I resolved the issue.

The message that my website was back online flashed on my screen even as I used the opportunity to eliminate anything that could be problematic in the future. I was surprised by how easy it was to resolve an issue that the word ‘fatal’ was used to describe. A problem that seemed unsolvable was actually a smokescreen at best.

As I pondered what to write, I remembered the quote from Maryanne Rodmacher that says, “At first glance, it may appear too hard. Look again, Always look again.”

As you’ve read about my week, I hope you saw the lessons that I learnt. But just in case they are summarised as follows:

Some things appear scarier than they are, always look again.

Denying a situation or problem doesn’t make it go away, so learn to confront your challenges.

Don’t bury you head in the sand hoping for magic or a miracle to happen; there are many things that remain in our gift to make happen. Wishing for it to happen is just that – wishing.

Feel your fears but get on with what needs to be done; smokescreens appear real.

Settle your nerves when you approach difficult tasks; tell yourself it has to be resolved and you’ve got what it takes to tackle them.

Sometimes the solution won’t come from where you expect it to come from or in the timescale that you expect it to happen.

Many times, you will be your own back up plan so prepare for it.

Most issues can be resolved, so don’t give up or give in to despair.

Have a little faith; act from that place of faith and not from a place of fear. Have a go and you may soon discover things aren’t as bad as you thought. Finally, remember that if you don’t give up today, you live to win another fight which you will be better equipped for.

My apologies if you tried to access the website during the week and saw the error message. I now know what to do if it happens again, so here’s to uninterrupted reading in the future.

Thank you for reading my post. Don’t forget to share the Blog with others and have a great week.