Forbidding Joy

I shouldn't have been surprised when it happened, all the warning signs had been there. I would be happily processing photos in Lightroom, my battery at 50% or more when suddenly the screen would go black. I couldn't get it back until I plugged it into the charger and hit the eject button. It always came back. Until it didn't. One morning I flipped open the lid of my seven year old laptop and was greeted with the black screen. It had already been charging all night.

I Googled MacBook Pro and black screen and tried all the various suggested fixes, and in a brief moment of joy I thought I had done it. I was able to load the photos I had taken that morning for a project I am working on, process the ones I wanted and exit out of Lightroom without a problem. At lunch when I flipped up the screen, blackness greeted me. There was no bringing it back this time. It was done.

I had been hoping to delay the purchase of a new laptop until the end of the year. Switching everything over in January. A new beginning at a new beginning. But that was not to be. The time had come to make a trip to the Apple store.

It wasn't that I didn't want a new computer, I did. I knew everything would be so much faster. It wasn't adjusting to something new, we learn new things much faster than we expect. It wasn't that I was afraid to spend the money (much to my husband's chagrin), I had been budgeting for a new computer for a while. What I was afraid of was transferring all the precious data. By God's grace, I had done a backup the day before it died. But still, could I trust that everything would transfer smoothly and quickly. I envisioned days of transferring, and having to reload Lightroom and Photoshop, praying that seven years of photographs would all end up in the correct place. Yes, I was scared.

I am really good at forbidding joy. I bought my new laptop on a Thursday. I didn't take the plastic off the box until Monday. I kept telling myself that I didn't have the quiet or the hours that I needed to focus on this process. Finally Monday afternoon after lunch and taking the dog for one more walk, I got the little red Swiss Army knife out of the drawer and slit the plastic wrap.

All my fears were unfounded. It was so intuitive to set up, the backup obviously making a huge difference. My Lightroom and Photoshop programs are subscription based so I just had to log in. The only small annoyance was that I had to download a new Adobe Cloud desktop app, which also went very smoothly. A lot has changed in seven years.

How many things do we put off due to fear? And then when we actually do them are so easy that we want to kick ourselves and say, "You should have done that sooner." When will we learn there is nothing to gain from forbidding joy, and everything to gain from taking action?