Persevering in the Face of Setbacks and Frustrations

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I suppose it is more or less inevitable that life is going to have its challenges, setbacks and frustrations.

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What I find challenging — particularly challenging — is always keeping an "even keel" in the face of day after day of unreliable Internet, misshipped orders, mistakes by the bank, lack of customer service, interruptions at the exact moment when I am trying the most to concentrate, clouds of pollen, cloudy skies every time there's an eclipse or a meteor storm... and the list goes on and one.

I'm I just having a "pity party" here?

Not really! This is more of an exploration of how to best deal with all this stuff — which does seem to arrive in a virtually never-ending stream — and not end up "going postal" in the process.

The latest was last week when I called in a few prescriptions to the pharmacy, and their automated system let me know that they would have to contact my doctor for a refill authorization, and that would result in a 24-hour delay.

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That's fine... but when I showed up two days later they still didn't have the prescription because evidently they hadn't heard back from the doctor's office... which had undoubtedly closed early because it's a long holiday weekend, with the net effect that a prescription called in on Tuesday last now likely won't be filled till Wednesday, or eight days after the fact.

Good thing I'm not on the floor bleeding out, somewhere!

Meanwhile, our rather unreliable Internet is being... well... unreliable, again.

I drove to town today to go to the supermarket, and happened to be looking at the utility masts and the almost insane way the wires are fed through stands of trees. It's a small wonder the service doesn't go out more often... I counted at least a dozen places where living branches were literally laying ON the lines, and there was one spot where the main feeder cable was literally the only thing keeping a tall skinny and very dead tree from falling across the road.

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Seems to me they could save themselves a lot of hassle and service calls if someone with a bucket truck and a branch saw was to just drive the roads now and then and maintain this stuff.

Of course, it's the usual story: they are short staffed as a result of Covid complications.

Frustrations don't always have a human error component, mind you. This evening we are evidently missing a once-in-a-lifetime "meteor storm" as the Earth passes through the tail of the ancient Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. You know how many of the named "meteor showers" result in maybe one or two nice meteors per minute, if you're lucky? This one supposedly would be a 30-45 minute display as much as a 1,000 meteors per hour!

Hence the "once-in-a-lifetime" bit.

Sadly, however, we have a layer of high cloud obscuring the view. Then again, the scientists say it could also be a complete bust so maybe we're not really missing anything.

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Meanwhile... it seems our Internet connection is back "on," so I'm going to speedily add some photos here and see if I can't publish this post before things head south again!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day/Remembrance Day!

How about YOU? Are you good at dealing with long streams of setback and frustrations? Or do you tend to "lose it," after a while? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20220531 00:51 PDT

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I try to take things in stride, give people the benefit of the doubt, and not get all ruffled about every thing that goes wrong. Note I said "try". I don't always succeed. But it takes a great deal of emotional energy to get in a knot about mishaps, so I try to decide what's really worth getting upset about.

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