I can’t act surprised when something that has been alerting me for 3 months finally makes the decision to fail. It’s like driving your car with the check engine light, and then trying to act all surprised when the engine blows up 3 months later.
In this case, it refers to the mail server of one of my customers. It’s been flashing the check engine light equivalent which is two notifications every day alerting me to the fact that the mailbox for one of the users is very full and despite my account being unlimited, the actual functional UNIX system that it’s hosted on has certain limitations I can’t ignore. I ignored them.
So this morning I woke up a little bit late because I slept past the get the garbage out alarm and then went back to sleep after feeding the pig. When I woke up after my nap there had been two phone calls and two email messages alerting me to the fact that today was the day. That particular mail account had taken the system down. Not the entire system but the mail server of that particular client.
So today I have to do the task that I could have done months ago. It’s not easier today or less easy in any way but now the customer is angry and has been without mail since the morning. It’s 11:30 a.m. now and I’m still doing it back up which means their mail is still offline. It was a silly thing to ignore and I knew this day would come forcing me to make the change. It’s just sad that my brain didn’t figure out it would have been so much better to do this 3 months ago before the failure instead of waiting for it.
I’m reading more and more on social media every single day about what ADHD means to other people and this executive function that is allowing people to use ADHD as an excuse for not doing things. It’s a weird comfort to know that when I don’t do things it’s because of the way my brain functions and not just me being me.
It doesn’t change anything, but it makes me feel slightly less guilty in one way while simultaneously making me feel slightly more guilty in a different way. I’m abusing the system of my brain. Or am I?
Whatever the case, it doesn’t change the fact that my customers’ mail is still offline and I’ve lost so many customers in the last few years due to aging out and closed businesses and poor service that each customer I retain is vital in allowing me to eat. I don’t want to lose more by being me. I used to be so good at support.
Oh well. It’s Monday. I’ll get it working.
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