Anxiety

Anxiety: An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness or concern about some uncertain event.

Here is my story of anxiety this week. It all started Monday morning.

I had done a computer backup during the night. When I looked at the computer in the morning I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t on and wouldn’t come on. My first thought was that the backup had killed the hard drive. For a little while… okay, for longer than that I have heard a click coming from the hard drive. I knew that is a bad sign of impending failure. I also thought it could be the mother board. I tried many times to get it to turn on but it wouldn’t.

I decided that I can’t let this problem determine my day. I decided to continue with my early morning routine which is going through my prayer list. After I was done I did a quick Internet search and was reminded of the power supply which should have been my first thought. I noticed the fan wasn’t turning so it seemed that the power supply was probably the problem. I went to work at the normal time and picked up a new one on the way home. I put it in and was back in business. Wow, what a relief.

I knew I needed to replace the hard drive. I planned to pick one up Tuesday after work. I was trying to keep this problem in its place but it was growing inside of me. On my way to work Tuesday morning I felt sick. I could not believe I was letting this computer problem turn my world upside down. I prayed for God to help me. I felt like canceling my job.

I called to mind some things I have been learning lately. This is from the book, Telling Yourself the Truth.
    Anxiety is:

1. Fear in the absence of real danger.
2. Overestimation of the probability of danger and exaggeration of its degree of terribleness.
3. Imagined negative results.
   

I could see how all of these were playing into this situation.

I got home too late Tuesday night to do anything about the computer. It seemed to be working okay other than the fear that the hard drive will die. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I just let it go, didn’t feel anxiety about it and hoped I wouldn’t forget to work on it. So Saturday morning I figured it was time. At the suggestion of a computer tech I downloaded a program that clones one hard drive to another. If all went well it should be very simple. The old drive would be duplicated and the new one would work just like the old one. I didn’t believe it. My past experience is that easy upgrades on the computer usually end up with collateral complications.

To my cynical surprise, it did go easy. I installed the new hard drive, ran the program, did a reboot, it copied everything over and about an hour and a half later I had a new hard drive running with all my programs and data. I was excited, an emotion I don’t let myself feel very often.

At my Samson Society meeting last night I was glad to talk honestly about how I had been feeling this week both about the anxiety and the excitement I had felt. If I wasn’t among such good friends I would have felt silly; how ridiculous that I had been so worked up. But that was the reality of my week and it felt good to share it with others.

Well this morning it was time to do another scheduled backup. I turned on the external drive, started the backup program and as soon as it started to make the Volume Shadow Copy, the horrible Blue Screen appeared with an error of "Bad_Pool_Header" Stop 0x00000019.

I restarted the computer and as soon as I tried the backup again, the same thing happened. After the error report was sent to Microsoft, it returned a recommendation of upgrading the mouse/keyboard utility. I decided all this would have to wait until after church. I would try to put it out of my mind.

After church I downloaded the update and installed it but the problem persisted. I tried a couple other things but still no resolve. Back on the Internet I started searching for a solution. In the back of my mind I was wondering just how bad the problem was.

I found a discussion about the exact problem I was having. A solution was presented that seemed somewhat complicated – it made me nervous – what if it makes the problem worse. I kept on reading and someone else came up with a resolution that seemed much easier to do and many others concurred that it worked. I took a few deep breaths, followed the directions and soon the problem was gone. Tonight I will find out for sure when I do a full backup.

Just for reference, here is a link to the problem and the solution in case any of you ever encounter it. For the resolve, look for post #70 on page 4.
Volume Shadow Copy Causing STOP 0x00000019 "Bad_Pool_Header"

As I look back I see many lessons in this whole thing. When I encounter the unpleasant state of mental uneasiness or concern about some uncertain event, I need to keep things in perspective; it’s probably not as bad as my mind says. I need to let others know what is going on, both in my mind and in whatever problem I am facing. Hey, they might have a solution and they can pray with me. I also need to trust God; He is much bigger than the problem and delights in helping His kids. I need to calmly persevere and ask a lot of questions; someone else has probably already gone through what I am facing.

So that was my week. Thanks for listening.

Philip