One wrong click and the stories we tell ourselves
A copywriter's midnight standoff with tech
It’s the middle of the night. My eyes are itchy from sleepiness and staring at the computer screen for way too long. I’m determined to get it done today, so no sleep for me until it is — that was 2 hours ago, and now I’m starting to question my decision-making skills.
It’s my own fault for working on it so late. And the reason was the classic:
“making a mountain out of a molehill”.
In my head, it was completely justified.
My past experience of updating the website involved me clicking the wrong button (literally one wrong button) and, as a result, spending a frantic half-hour trying to reverse all the changes. The ‘back’ button only took me so far, so in the end I had to restore everything from backup and start again...
This time, the task involved updating domain settings, and the idea alone was even more terrifying – I’m a copywriter, not a tech wizard.
Given my track record, I expected it would be complicated and confusing, and would take forever to do.
I found every excuse under the sun for why I should do other things and delay, as much as I could, the time when I have to sit down and face this demon.
I organised my email folder, made a new to-do list so I could add new things to the top of the list that were more urgent than the website update (they weren’t), and spent 15 minutes searching the Thesaurus for a perfect replacement for the word…
‘inane’
I was even willing to rewrite copy for the entire site, AGAIN, even though it read great.
It took until the middle of the night for me to run out of excuses NOT to do it, so here I was, crunched over my laptop, finally – though very reluctantly – logging in to WordPress, expecting to be up until dawn to get this sorted.
With help from Gemini at the ready, I got to work. – well, I almost did.
Even after logging in, I wanted to delay things. I checked the backup was up to date, I glanced through all the pages, reviewed traffic statistics, read through a help guide, even though I practically memorised the steps...
Eventually there was nothing else I could think of – except, perhaps, making another cup of tea – so I clicked on the domain settings:
Step 1 – done
Step 2 – done
Why am I sailing through this?
Copy values here, check a tickbox there, and then the moment that would determine if the backup would come in useful again was right in front of me...
The ‘update settings’ button!
This is it.
With one eye closed – I guess that was my way of trying to look away – I clicked it.
A simple message appeared.
’Updated’
Well, that wasn’t even in the slightest bit comforting... Only one way to see if it worked – I refreshed my site.
And there it was. My homepage just as I remembered it, only better. I clicked around it just to be sure. Everything was working perfectly.
SUCCESSSSSSS!
If not for the fact that it was the middle of the night and the whole house was fast asleep, I would have done a little victory dance around the room and laughed as loud as my lungs would let me. Instead, a small nod to my computer screen had to suffice.
Still, the feeling of pride was rather spectacular.
I looked at the clock – 20 minutes.
I was finished, in 20 MINUTES?
What?!
I was shell-shocked and oddly disappointed – which is ridiculous all in itself.
I guess I wanted another proof that I’m good with words, not tech... speaking of mixed emotions...
My experience was so different from what I had thought it would be that I didn’t go to bed for another 10 minutes because I wanted to understand this discrepancy.
I realised that in all the making of the mountain out of the molehill, I forgot an important point – the past experience of pressing the wrong button – as stressful as it was at the time – taught me something.
It taught me a lot, actually.
For starters, it taught me there is a backup if things go hideously wrong...
That’s the beauty of making a mistake. Sure, it’s not great in the moment, but in the long run, we learn a lot more and a lot faster. For some reason, though, I focused on the negative experience rather than the skills I gained as a result.
It sounds silly when you think of it this way.
But I think it’s true for a lot of us.
So, if you have a task on your to-do list that you are avoiding because you supposedly aren’t good at it, do it today.
I have a feeling you will be as positively surprised as I was.
Until next time,
Dot
P.S.
If you want to include stories in your content, but you’re not sure how to write one…
Try this simple story template for size.
It’s in this post.
