I'm So Grateful for Breaking My Laptop Charger
Sometimes the universe stops us for a reason
It was almost midnight when she roused the pages. The two books she had once used to perform her spiritual rituals were dormant temples. They flung open their heavy doors, embracing her within the arms of her reclaimed religion.
Its starvation of human intimacy felt centuries overdue. But now, the books had been opened once more.
And it was all thanks to a broken laptop charger.
These two books are my journals: one for gratitude and the other for morning pages.
I balance daily morning pages with evening gratitude journaling. By processing my thoughts and emotions in writing at these points of the day, I am able to set myself up for productive days and go to sleep feeling grateful for my efforts. Since starting these practices earlier this year, I have certainly noticed a deepened self-relationship, along with a heightened awareness of the world around me.
However, every practice demands some sort of sacrifice. Mine was my own headspace.
What happened
I’m currently sitting at my home office (desk with a laptop on it) and over a third of the way through a 30-day writing challenge. I had been at that desk solidly for the past 6 hours really geeking out about article ideas that could prove the most value to people, and writing chunks as I went.
I find it difficult to finish my work as it is, thanks to my ADHD. Marry this ridiculously short attention span with a hindering perfectionism and you are left with an unhappy marriage of a writer in constant doubt of their abilities.
And as we all know, this can heavily impede our performance.
During a break, I played an online game with my family over Zoom. A sweet release for my poor eyes, which had become bogged down in text — and self-doubt.
After tapping out and realising my laptop was almost dead even when plugged in, I discovered that I had accidentally crushed my laptop charger — which was already partly damaged — with my bin while leaning on it during the game.
I’m no electrician, but with the wiring completely cut and the outer casing snapped, fixing this looked nearly impossible.
What followed
After jumping to action and ordering a new one, I took back some control over the situation by arranging to go over to my partner’s house and write tomorrow’s article there with him.
Fortunately, I had finished all the writing I needed to do for the day and was left to my own devices. Even though not all of my actual devices were present.
I refuse to write anything but notes on my phone. To me, it’s associated with leisure and social media distractions, so short note-taking and being social and connected are the only things I use them for.
What did I do that evening?
Well, I first cooked myself a healthy, whole foods-based dinner — something I hadn’t managed to do in 2 straight days. I sat down comfortably to eat it whilst watching a full episode of a sitcom, rather than the short stints of YouTube videos I would quickly consume in breaks. And most importantly, I showered, brushed my teeth, got dressed in cosy pyjamas and realised I had been suffering due to missing these basic daily rituals.
Being forced away from my usual habit of writing into the late hours allowed me to understand that I had been severely neglecting my self-care since this challenge began.
It was near midnight before I actioned these realisations by reaching for my books. I first opened my gratitude journal and was horrified to see the date of the latest filled page glaring at me.
It was 17 days since my last confession and it felt as if I had sinned to the gods of gratitude.
This is the entry I hoped would appease them:
28th April, 2021
1. I am grateful for breaking my laptop charger because I wouldn’t have opened this book.
2. I’m grateful to my partner for letting me work from his laptop tomorrow whilst I wait for my new charger to be delivered.
3. I am grateful to have been strong enough to say “no” to my second takeaway of the day, even though I really felt the need to eat bad food as a coping mechanism to stress.
4. I am grateful for the time I have spent on getting ready for bed and the time I’ll spend cleaning in the morning, without my laptop.
5. I am grateful to have things to be grateful for, enough to fill an A5 page with.
What I realised
Whenever submitting any sort of work whose success is dependent on the opinions of others, I make it my obsession.
With my disability, I always feel like I have something to prove. The big “I can do it too” proclamation always rings my brain like a bell, alongside the slightly louder sound of “And I can do it better”.
In this case, I was also driven to work harder in the face of burnout by a third voice. One that echoes constantly and dimly. It says “What you are doing isn’t a real job. You can’t make money from it”.
Well, voice, I’m not backing down.
My client list has been quite thirsty since the start of the pandemic, so I’m choosing to dedicate a great deal of my time to blog writing. But my deep-seated inferiority sees to it that I often push myself to the point of exhaustion, despite not always yielding any concrete results.
I found that something as straightforward as going without access to my laptop for two days dramatically improved my work-life balance.
When it was a requirement to physically leave my house and work at a different location, I was forced to put deadlines on my work. My mindset involuntarily switched from “I’ll finish this by the end of today”, to “I need to finish this within 2 hours”.
I was also able to have exercise and outdoor time, which had been significantly lacking. It even led me to the inspiration for another candid personal article.
Now my laptop is back in action, I’m continuing to set myself time-based goals to get articles with certain word count done before even allowing myself the chance to procrastinate.
Final thoughts
Sometimes we become so caught up in what we are doing that the gratitude for doing them slips to the back of the shelf, just like the journals themselves. It’s still there but it gets concealed beneath all of those other “more important” things we need to do.
The universe sometimes gives us wake-up calls disguised as bumps in the road. But when forced to stop and take a moment to reflect on them, it’s clear they happen to attempt to divert us from unnecessary traffic.
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