December 1, 2010 – Well I ordered a new operating system – $29 – and everybody said this would be no problem. I guess I knew better.

First off, it took 12 hours to update and download. Then my printer didn’t work. I was afraid to touch the Aperture Photo Program, and of course it didn’t work in the new system.It said I needed to install Aperture, and when I did, the disc got stuck in the computer and I can’t get it out, nor do all of the standard techniques for disc removal work. And my printer doesn’t work, either.

All my photos are in there, and I can’t either see or upload them. If they are lost, well…The person I usually call isn’t available right now, and Apple is closed. My desk is littered with discs, passwords and serial numbers. I have to say thinking of all my photos sucked up out there and unreachable is a bit unnerving. No, I was in a panic.

So I woke up on and off during the night, went to the computer,tried this, tried that, went online to help forums. And then my back hurt and I had a headache. Where am I in life?

I thought of tech support, custome service, shipping off the computer. How enmeshed in my own system of fear, I thought. How far I’ve come, how far to go. “Well,” said Maria,” I’m sure you will fix it. And what if you don’t?”

I stopped and thought about it, waved goodbye as she went to work. “Well, I will take more pictures,” I said, as her car sailed out of the driveway.

How easy it is to make our own traps and just jump in. I got a lovely message this morning from Gail Dewey, Ed Rouse’s cousin. She said her friend always scolds her having her photos stored in boxes at home. ‘What if there was a fire?” Gail says she responds this way: “I’d graby my hubby and my dog and we’d wait outside for the fire department.”

“But what about all those memories?” asked her friend.

“They’re in my heart and head, and i am can take them with me when I go! Never worry.” Wise person, Gail.

So I’m sitting at my computer and thinking back to when I started as a writer. Typewriter, carbon paper, no computer, discs, e-mail, software, camera or photo programs. I remember sitting in an attic in New Jersey clacking out my first novel, wearing Dickens gloves with holes in the fingers, it was so cold up there. Then, walking to a copying machine, clacking out copies, going to the Post Office, shipping them to New York.

I loved that room, and the purity and simplicity of the process. All the Tech Support in the world was in my head. Me and camera are as pure, and this morning, we will walk out and make some new images for my head and my heart. And hopefully for yours. I won’t surrender to the Fear Machine, not this one or the scores of others churning around us day after day. Life is a choice and so is fear.

It was just me and the typewriter, really and some ribbon and carbon paper. I can’t imagine the typewriter not working. So everything is a gift. I am certain those photos are there, and that I will retrieve them, after some difficult phone calls and nerve-wracking moments. But I keep thinking of what Gail said. They are in my heart and my head, the safest and most precious place of all.

Thanks Gail.