The Journey of Parenthood…

Broken Computer = Lesson Learned

On August 12th (a Wednesday) my computer started acting screwy. It kept rebooting itself and on Thursday is made these error messages and told me I was going to lose everything on my hard drive. I called HP for help and it turns out they charge $50 just to HELP over the phone! Um no. I just shut that junk down and went to bed!

On Friday I got the same message again and I hunted around for someone local. Zach took it in for me and they said it’d be ready in a week and would cost $80 flat rate to fix whatever was wrong with it. I was not excited to be without my computer for a week but figured I’d use my old laptop from my freshman year of college if I had to. Well that Saturday we ended up going to Melbourne and Nana passed away so I stayed down there for 8 days and it turned out I didn’t miss my computer at all.

When we got back I was eager to have my computer back as well since blogging is something I enjoy and knew it would bring me a way to express my feelings about everything going on. Well it worked fine for a couple of days and then it started rebooting itself all over again. This past Friday it went to the same error screen. I called the guys who fixed it and they said they’d do it again for free this time. Ugh. I was so annoyed!

I thought about it though and decided that instead of hauling out my Dell and messing with that, that I’d just go computer free for the weekend. I GOT SO MUCH DONE!!! On Friday alone I did 4 scrapbook pages AND got a ton of clothes photographed and weighed to go on Ebay. I missed the computer and I’d pass by the desk often and would keep thinking, “oh I should check Facebook” but couldn’t. And I’d want to go google something or look something up and couldn’t either which was also annoying.

Even though it was a pain it did make me think about how MUCH I am on the computer. Anything can become an idol and idols are sinful. I do feel like I have made my computer an idol in my life and I didn’t even realize it. I’d have a few free min and where would I be? At the computer! Sure I haven’t ever looked at porn or done something sinful on the computer but just the fact that it is SUCH a need for me and that I was SO much time on it is wrong! Wasting time happens without even realizing it. You sit down to check Facebook and you see that someone put up new pics so then you look through them and comment and such and BAM it’s been 20 min. You update your blog and notice that four other people have updated theirs so you read them and BAM 20 more min. All the extra little things add up and really take up a lot of the day.


I managaed to go a full 3 days without even checking Facebook once. I went on my phone and updated my status so people would know (not that anyone would worry haha) that my computer was broken and that’s it. Monday I broke down and asked to borrow Zach’s laptop so I could go ahead and write my latest blog entries but add the pics once I had my computer back.

I got the computer back yesterday and it seems to be working fine so far (it has some MEGA virus or something). While it’s great having it back, the time away from it was a blessing. I am changing my computer priorities! Yes, I’ll still be putting TONS of pics on Facebook and YES I’ll still be blogging all the time but my goal is to do it in certain blocks of time that I decide and to not get so easily side-tracked into reading other things ~ we’ll see how I do! 🙂

Emily Parker
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