Step Two - Doubts and setbacks

What a month this has been so far...

I started a ton of new habits, started writing a book for NaNoWriMo, registered to go back to school, and started all the tests and forms to do so.  All while my house was being remodeled, my murder mystery dinner party was being scheduled and my calendar filled up.  

In the midst of a bulging schedule, imminent deadlines and uncomfortable environments, I started to fail.  

I couldn't figure out how to get class information so I could build my class schedule for the Spring semester.  I also couldn't figure out how to find the requirements, syllabus or what supplies were expected.

I failed to pass the placement test the first time.  Failure meant I couldn't sign up for the class I wanted to round out my Spring semester with.

I was being pulled to make decisions about prolems with the remodel that weren't my fault but were definitly my problem now. 

I was also seeing all the work it was going to take to get my home to it's new, settled, state. 

In the midst of this storm of hurdles, learning and failures, I heard my doubts loud and clear.

    Things are just going to get harder

                    You're just going to give up again

    You aren't even good enough at the one thing you were sure you're good at

                You're motives for starting this are problematic

        What if you end up not even liking writing after this

    This is going to cost your family so much money and your spouse doesn't really want you to do this

           Your spouse knows you can't do this, that's why he doesn't want you wasting money

    You are going to fail and be worse off

The good news is I entered this season knowing it would be a season of learning, and that learning is hard.  It takes time to forge connections and commit new information to memory.  It takes failure.  It can be uncomfortable, embarassing and disheartening to fail but you often learn more from failure than success. Dispite my natual desire to be good at what I try the first time, that's unlikely and sometimes counter productive.  

Being a student my age is going to have challenges.  Not only is the school experience not designed for me, but my own brain might actively be working against me in some ways.   I'm going to have to work hard to set aside the grumpy, stubborn part of myself that doesn't want to do things other peoples way.  I'm going to have to actively set my pride aside.  I'm going to have to work at learning things I don't think apply to me.  

I've already been fighting my doubts and having to defend my decisions to friends and loved ones who think it's silly to start this endevor.  I'm going to have to take every opportunity to remind myself I'm trying to learn.  I'm commited to the attempt without judging the worthiness of my motivations.  

So here's to improvement, progress and growth.  As long as I'm teachable, I can't fail to learn something.

Failing Forward

I think I've failed.  It's the first day of the second month and I'm pretty sure I failed.  I expect to do that a lot this year.  Last year felt like such a success.  I learned, I prepared, I rested and I completed.  When I was praying about my resolutions for 2019 I was nervously excited for the direction God was leading.  As I was asking God what He wanted me to work on, and set as my intention, He brought those three awful words: 

Fail with Grace 

UGHHHHHH!  I do not fail gracefully.  I have a little tiny hiccup and then I give up in a huff and get depressed.  At least that's been my pattern for a very long time.  I tend to bury my head like an ostrich in the sand of my own negative self talk.  

The lessons God has planned for us are intentional, well timed and for our good.  I have been working on breaking the habit of capitulating at the first hint of difficulty for a long time.  So I know, this year is a test.  A chance for me to see my progress, practice the lessons God has taught me and develop healthier reactions.  It requires that I am keeping my head up and my thoughts aware of how I am dealing with the challenges of learning, making mistakes and stumbling over obstacles.  

Failing with grace is the act of failing forward.  It's the intention of failing without castigating myself.  The power to chose hope over despair.  

Failure has the special challenge of misdirection.  Failure is used by the enemy to shine a spotlight on our shortcomings and mistakes.  Our enemy loves to point out our failures in every aspect of our lives.  If it doesn't cause us to stop in our tracks immediately, then it certainly gets us focused on the wrong thing and walking in the wrong direction.  A failed connection with a potential friend can send you into a tailspin trying to figure out what's wrong with you and why no one likes you.  It may lead you to the conclusion that putting work into a friendship isn't worth it.  It may cause you to strike out in anger.  What those trains of thought forget is that God uses failure to shine a spotlight on what God is doing.

God is ALWAYS going to glorify His name and is working for our good, which is just a fancy way of saying God is always teaching us.  Always.

Failure often makes us feel inadequate but that feeling often leads to the false conclusion that we can't do it at all.  Whatever that "it" is for you, trying looking at your failure through God's spotlight.  Is it calling you to endure?  Teaching you how to do better?  Showing you a different way?  Calling you to a new task?  Convicting you of sin?  Reminding you to show grace, to yourself and others?  Giving you the opportunity to be a witness?

So, my goal this year is to see my failure from God's perspective and not the enemies.  Not to see my failures as the end of the road, but just another step in the learning process.  How about you?  How do you view failure?  I'd love to hear from you!

Resolution Rebound

So maybe things didn't go as well as you hoped this year.  Your resolutions were left in the dust months ago and you've been beating yourself up ever since.  Whether your goals for this year were forgotten, failures or weights that have felt like a burden, there is still value in them.

So...how'd ya do?  I don't mean "did you complete your resolution".  That's what we usually ask ourselves, right?  If we think to ask ourselves at all.  While there is definitely something to be celebrated in the question 'how far did you get' (no matter how far that was) that's not really the best question.  As a recovering perfectionist, I failed attempts at resolutions, when I made them, and eventually I gave up.  Why bother to attempt something you keep failing at?  What's the point?  I failed them because I wouldn't (couldn't) do them perfectly, whatever that elusive ideal was.  Resolutions are valuable because we all know at our core that being stagnant is not good.  Being the same makes us feel stuck, trapped, and to some that is an allusion to death.  No one likes feeling mired.  God is calling us toward him.  It is an act of movement.  Resolutions are meant to bump us out of our ruts and back on track.  Following the well worn path won't bring fulfillment, it will only bring drudgery.

Too often we get bound up in our performance and forget that resolutions aren't meant to fix what is broken in us, only God can do that.  Resolutions are meant to prompt us to assess habits that may not be serving us any more.  If your resolution was to lose weight, don't only ask yourself if you lost weight.  Ask the better questions, like: did you try new things, did you try and form new habits, did you bring self awareness to an issue in your life and did you learn something from the experience.  Looking at how you did through that lens will bring less fruitless self condemnation and more helpful analysis. God has taken great care to teach me to look at failures as the teaching opportunities they are.  So no matter how far your got towards your resolution I want to encourage you to take a healthy look at how you did.

Let's begin by identifying what result you were actually trying to achieve.  For me, I wanted to practice my craft, invest my talents to God's glory and develop good writing habits.  If I'm being completely honest I will have to include that a little part of me wanted to become famous, succeed and cultivate a following in a meaningfully visible way and that I would have it all figured out.  If you hadn't guessed, I am not famous.  (Praise the Lord for his great and wondrous blessings!)  I don't have a following and I do not have it figured out.  If I looked at this years resolution through the negative lens of my flesh, I have failed.  I don't have anything to "show" for what I have done this year, at least not by the standards of the flesh.  That's not true of course, I have done what I set out to do.  It just doesn't look like what I thought it would look like.  Examine yourself honestly.  Are you disappointed in your resolutions because you were secretly hoping for something else?  Are you hoping for something to show?  A gold star that you can wear with pride?  Most of us are just hoping for change but the insidious unspoken expectation is, what are we going to change in to?  It's dangerous to think of our resolutions like a chrysalis from which a butterfly will emerge.  They are instead classrooms and training grounds.  Our learning will not be done.  Let's move away from the desire to check our resolutions off like a to-do list and instead, move towards the adventure they are meant to be.

So what worked?  What didn't?  As you think about this years resolution, and think about what goals you want to make for next year, it's important to assess how you make your resolutions as much as to assess what those resolutions are.  Are you goals too vague?  Too unreasonable?  To small?  To undefined?  Too dependent on chance?  Were you too focused on the wrong thing?  Did you check in with yourself to refocus?  It took me ten months to figure out I was focused on what I could do for God instead of on God.  I thought I was giving Him a gift that He would use.  What I was reminded of is that God doesn't need me to do anything.  He does it, He brings the increase.   I planned to find Him, I looked for Him and He keeps showing up in wonderful ways.  That is what worked for my resolution.  I committed to a course of action to find my God and He found me instead.  No matter what your resolution was or will be you have got to check in with yourself to find what is and is not working and then change.  That's the point, isn't it?  Change?  Change course slightly, change your attitude about what that means, change your expectation of becoming.  I could insert a cliched line here but I won't.  If you take the time to think about your goals and ask yourself what is and isn't working, what you are really trying to achieve and are you stepping out of your rut, you'll find yourself in a much different space when you think about your resolutions.

You've got one more week to think about what's next.  For me, I have some changes on the horizon.  Not only am I launching my website http://www.jd-iana.com, I've got some changes coming to my blog.  Join me next week for the conclusion to our resolution smevolution.

Monument vs Standing Stone

Many of us look back at our lives and can pick out the bad decisions, big and small, that have become monuments to our failures. Sometimes we make the monuments so big we can't move past them.  Sometimes we miss the point of the monument altogether.  

One of my big failures was college. I knew what school I was supposed to go to since my freshman year of high school.  My mother will tell you she hated the school I chose because it was so far away.  By the time I graduated high school and headed off, I had no other direction.  I was sure that was where God wanted me to go.  I went for about a semester before I failed out and had to be shipped back to my parents in shame. There were a whole lot of bad decisions during that time but one of them has come to my mind lately because God has made me aware of the fact that I'm doing it again. I decided to go to college to become a nurse. Was I keen about caring for people, good at math and science, and excited about the field of medicine? NOPE! I didn't like most of those things, and I was not good at them. Why did I choose to pursue nursing. Because I wanted to be a medical missionary. I wanted to be ready and willing to go wherever God wanted me to go. The period of failure that followed left me angry and confused. How could God abandon me like that? I was doing all this for Him! I had to come to grips with the fact that God never intended for me to be a missionary to foreign lands, much less a medical one. I looked at the desires of my heart and misinterpreted how it would look and made the very large mistake of thinking that's what God wanted me to do. 

So often we hold onto the verses that tell us God will give us the desires of our hearts, and that's true, but we fail to remember the other parts of those verses and chapters.  We have to ground ourselves in the Lord first.  To delight in Him, then He will bring about giving us the opportunities to fulfill the desires He designed us with.  Not only that, but God is going to bring things about how He wants, no matter what we have planned.  No matter what or how we thought it would happen.  

My mother told me today that she never understood why I went to college to pursue something I hated. I was momentarily stunned as I said to myself "I was pursuing what I thought God wanted me to do" and I realized I can remember three distinct times when I have said that. College, adoption, and writing. Three major turning points. I don't know if I was supposed to go to college but I can tell you I met my lifelong best friend there. Her family practically adopted me and when my hubby was desperate for a job and we had to leave our state and our families, God provided one 30 minutes from her. I don't know if I was supposed to fail and give up college but I can tell you that I found my husband and my talent when I got home. I have no idea if I was supposed to pursue adoption but I know God has a plan. 

Major milestones have been marked by this pattern. Get a nudge from the Lord, create a picture of how I think that will look, and then go to the extreme to fulfill it.  The beautiful part of a God who is always teaching and growing us into who He designed us to be is the fact that He knows us, knows what we need to learn and keeps giving us refresher courses. As I stand on the precipice of pursuing "What I think God wants me to do" I'm grateful for the reminder today that I need to make sure I'm not more focus on what I can do for the Lord.  

All the hesitation, doubt and caveats I have being battling this year were because I was trying to do more than what God wanted me to do when I knew that what God wanted was for me to spend time with Him. He specifically asked me to "do" nothing. To rest. I've been fighting that hard. I don't want to be lazy. I want to be preparing. I don't want to be rushing to the deadline because I didn't give myself adequate prep time. So the little hint, the gift of a redemptive work for the future, I turned into a mission statement for life. I took that one thing and turned it into a college prep course full of requirements, standards of success and work. The whole time moaning like a toddler about when rest time was going to be over already. I know what God has given me. I know that what He is asking of me right now is not a spiritual workout regimen to prepare for the race. He is asking me to spend time with the source of my fuel. 


Life gives us plenty of chances for self reflection if we want them. I am going to use this moment to turn the monument I was building to failure into a standing stone of remembrance. To remind myself that I tend to focus on what I can "do" for God instead of spending time with Him. To remind myself to strip away my expectations of what I think comes next and let God teach me at the pace He intends. To remind myself that my future is in God's loving hands and it will be for my good, one way or another. I  choose to turn those monuments to my failure into standing stones of remembrance of what the Lord has done.

Expectation vs Anticipation

Welcome to part two!  If you haven't read Anticipation vs Expectation, I highly recommend you start with that.

I long for adventure.  It's a big part of how God created me and I'm just now discovering that in my life.  That it's okay to long for the things God made me to long for.  Ultimately, that longing for adventure is a longing for God who wants to take me on an adventure.  I was thinking of that while on vacation with my hubby and the fact that it's the company, not the setting, that makes the trip.  Going away from the "normal" of our every day lives somehow gives us eyes to see the beautiful, the amazing and the exciting, but it's usually the companionship that makes the whole experience valuable.  If you read last weeks blog you will know I had a list of expectations that I was trying to set aside for, the much preferred, anticipation.  Boy, oh boy, did God test me on that list.

If you haven't guessed already, I got to go to Hawaii for the first time in my life. As much as I talked about expectations last week I found some had settled into my mind without my notice which really polarized my experience.  More than that, God exposed those expectations to me before hand but I failed to anticipate He would challenge them.

Hawaii is a study in contrasts. Million-dollar skyscrapers next door to moldering buildings. Islands renowned for their beauty slowly being overrun by those coming to see it.  Awe and sorrow mixed up together.  I expected to see lush tropical landscapes from quaint bungalows beside the sea....yeah, nope.  I also half expected to get a lei when I got off the plane.  That didn't happen either.  Waikiki is packed full of skyscrapers competing for a view of the ocean.  I get it, its' a tourist destination, what did I expect?  I was very pleased with the hotel we chose, they gave me wine when we walked in the door and they were separate from the hustle of "the strip" which suited us just fine.

The first thing we did in Hawaii was to go to church.  God totally orchestrated this and I can't tell you how grateful I am to God for that.  We arrived too late or too early due to some old information but it wasn't "too" anything because we talked to people and ate with them and just generally felt loved and welcomed to a degree I haven't felt in a very long time at church.  I got to sing in worship with a congregation for the first time in years and I straight up wept for joy.  God started our time in Hawaii by reminding us how seldom we appreciate what is going well.  We take "well" for granted.  You walked up those stairs without tripping, isn't that amazing!  You have food in the house, isn't that spectacular?!  We notice when something is absent, not when it's present.  It was a theme that God gave me practical experience in that week. The church itself was also a school and they had been there for about 100 years.  In the middle of their playground was a huge mango tree that might have been as old.

There was a guest speaker who spoke on American Exceptionalism, an amazing speaker and historian, and I totally recommend you give it a listen, which was kind of a fire hose of information, but totally worth it. 

They gave us lei's!  We also had people talk to us for hours after the service and we didn't want to leave!  They also presented their intention as a church to pray for Muslims for 30 days, especially during Ramadan, and had booklets to help guild you through it.  I'm totally committing to this, more on that later, because we have friends who celebrate Ramadan and I love them and want them to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.  All in all it was amazing and I can't express how much we loved this place.

I don't even remember what else we did that day because we knew nothing would top church.  Oh yeah, we did an escape room...it did not exceed the fun of church.  


I had three days on my own and I expected that I was going to sit on the beach, fully sun-blocked, and catch up on my Bible Studies and have a totally deep time with the Lord as I soaked in the beauty of His creation.  That kind of happened.  Mostly I got sand in my Bible Studies while I watched the ocean and the few people brave enough to join me on the partly cloudy, windy, cool beach.  I thought the weather was perfect.    We were watching the news carefully about the earthquake and increased activity in the volcano and the new vents.  We had made arrangements to visit the Big Island of Hawaii during our trip and wondered about safety while we prayed for the safety of the families directly affected.  Some of what God showed me during this time needs to be fleshed out in blog posts later on, so you all get to enjoy Hawaii with me for a while longer.

I have to admit that up to this point Hawaii felt very...normal.  The city feel of Waikiki could have been anywhere.  The sharp contrast in the poverty level between streets could have been any inner city.  Other than a beach, which I could walk too, I wasn't seeing the lush tropical forest I expected.  Even though I thought I had set my expectations aside, I had kept some unawares.  I'm from a very dry state.  Water is a novelty to me.  Green is a miraculous color.  While the ocean was lovely, and the green beautiful, it didn't feel amazing.  I expected...I anticipated, amazing.

Had I trained myself to see amazing in my every day to the point where I was unable to recognize the miraculously lovely?  Had I desensitized myself to adventure by seeking it in every circumstance?

Nope.

I was failing to see that the very list of expectations I had exposed last week were being challenged.  Looking back over that list I can see that God made sure every one of those expectations were broken in one way or another so I had a chance to see what I would do.  I had been practicing seeing disappointment and hardship as an exciting adventure at home but it's a totally different animal when you are not at home.  Why is that?  Why do we expect things to be different when we're away?  We are the same and we go wherever we are.  How often are our disappointments based on the belief that things should be different?

There were plenty of disappointments on the trip.  I expected to see a volcano.  I expected to be awed by unfamiliar beauty.  I expected to stay healthy.  As in most things in life, all of those expectations are a little more complicated than the few words I boiled them down too.  I was disappointed, not in the trip, but in myself for struggling to have a good attitude.  I was living as if I expected vacation meant it would be effortless.  That it would come without struggle.  That I would rest from all the "good work" I had done in enlightening myself with God's wisdom.  Yeah, God disillusioned me of that pretty quickly on vacation.  You don't own the lessons God has taught you until the test.  How insufferable would I have been if I had walked serenely through my amazingly perfect vacation, I shudder to think.

The day before we left, as I was walking to the third location on the airport complex looking for my glasses case that had my boarding pass for the airplane of what could not even be charitably called a "comedy" of errors, God reminded me to thank Him.  To thank Him for the errors, the mistakes, the fumbles and the hardships.  He reminded me to thank Him for all the things that were going right in that moment of frustration.  Praise the Lord, He took a "failure" of a day and helped me put on joy.  He redeemed my day not with what I expected  but with what He anticipated.  I almost missed out on wonder.  I almost lost the adventure.  I forgot for a moment that adventure almost always comes from the unexpected.
 

Because sometimes adventure is no toilet paper, swollen ankles, sunburns, lost important items, travel hiccups, lost cars, lost CC scares and wasted money but it's also my hubby tracking down ice, seeing lava, exploring sights we wouldn't have seen, finding the CC at a restaurant after a whole day, someone at church on mother's day asking me if it was okay to wish me a happy mothers day even though he didn't know me or my situation and delighting in what's going well even when not everything is.

Because no matter where you are, God is there with you and He delights in us delighting in Him!

Linkups:

Happy Rock

Life is certainly interesting.  I had a first time preventative health screen yesterday.  I was a little nervous about it. Since I haven't been getting good sleep, and I've been stressed out, I haven't been managing my life well.  I got up yesterday morning to work out and noticed someone had put this little painted rock in our yard.  I've been hearing about this trend from my geocaching friends but it just started out my day reminding me that God saw me.  He knows what I need and randomly, like a lover, surprises me with gifts.  Sure enough, when I got home from my appointment this little rock was gone.  I was really glad I got a picture of it.  There was no rock to remind me today when my body totally rebelled at yoga or when my tasks began to become overwhelming or when I lost my Bible Study book I needed to have completed for tonight.  I still looked for it today.  In that spot I knew it wouldn't be. It's not really about the rock.  It's about choosing to see the little and big gifts that God has given me today, right now, even in the midst of attack and stress and disappointment.  

Has God given you a happy rock today?  Would you notice if He had?

So I was thinking

Last week was rough.  I was under spiritual attack.  Spiritual attacks are the worst because they don't come from one direction.  Whatever is going on in your life...that's the direction.  Knowing that it's happening does a few things for you though.  It helps you gain perspective and choose to have a better attitude about it.  It also reminds you that maybe you weren't spending as much time with the Lord as you needed too.  Having long term health issues leaves my body drained.  I wake up exhausted on most days and I've got a long to do list that I sometimes have to set aside to lay down for a bit.  I should be sitting at my Father's feet, clinging to his shins, for the strength I need on a daily basis but I have a couple of problems.  Pride and depression.  In the struggle for every day, I forget to put on the armor of God.  I forget that God is my source and I continue to pour out without being filled.
The next month is going to have some unique challenges but that's only because I have projects that are coming due and I've now left myself in the unenviable position of force marching myself to complete the tasks.  It's nothing unusual.  It's life.

So because I like sharing my to do lists with you on occasion...feel free to stop reading now. ;)

Deadline: November

I've started the planning for this years murder mystery.  Idea and concept.  Now all I have to do is write it all.

Deadline: Feels more imminent than it probably is

Read and review a book for family

Start on project I think God is asking me to do or at least preparing me to do or wants me to say yes to.  This one's been on my mind.  I think God wants me to write a book.  So I've been pondering the first question.  Fiction or Non-Fiction.  My knee jerk reaction was to write a Non-Fiction (shocking I know) but the main doubts that have assailed me are these.  Non-Fiction, in my opinion falls into two categories, research and opinion and mostly the first one falls into the second one.  So that requires that either I am an expert or people want to hear my opinion.  You see my dilemma.  Ultimately I am going to step out in faith that God asked this of me and so I'm going to do it.  But it's put a kink in settling on what exactly I'm going to attempt to write.  I'm not stressing yet.  I'm pretty sure God's clearing my schedule starting in September.  I just know that starting the prep work is a vital part of being prepared when God asks you to move.  If He's given me warning in advance, it's for this very purpose, to prepare.

Deadline: September

Comic Con Costumes.  I've told you all what we're doing this year but other than sewing a practice skirt and making a half-hearted attempt at lekku, I've done nothing.  I keep thinking it's because we might lose more weight but I really should be completing these.  I can take them in if I have to but it's got to get done and really I should be doing this instead of the less firm deadline ones.

In addition to these, I still have the marketing for Crossfire and Petrie's and two Bible Studies and the jail and the rest of normal life.  Feels like more than it is.  This week is going to be full of appointments, obligations, growing pains and the firm understanding that I have no choice but to sit at my Father's feet and listen, praise, worship, and be filled.

Hectic life

We realized fairly late we were running out of time very quickly.  The last week and some before the Con was a mad dash to get props and costumes done.  The collar is EVA foam and card stock.

We attached it to the cloth harness with velcro.

This did not last the day at the Con.  If I redo it, I will have to make a ridged harness.










 The chest armor I cut out of a template first and then cut it out of EVA foam.  The cones were made from craft foam.







I added the accents with craft foam, gap fill foam, pool noodles and craft gems.  I get delight out of using what I have at hand to "make it work" as Tim Gunn would say.








This was then coated with Plasti-dip.




The final product was painted with acrylic gold paint and we again attached it with velcro.  This had limited success during the rigors of con.  While my brazier never fell off, it came close.  I'll have to think of a better plan.

I bleed on this project to be sure but was once again pleased to play with found objects.  Shower curtain rings, dollar store ball, jewelry bail, pool noodles and paper.  My husband is a wiz with Pepekura.  I once again started with a base coat of Plasti-dip and then used a combo of acrylic paint, washi tape and paint pen.  

 It looked great and held up fairly well at the con but I got my head piece caught in the chain at least three times and the plastic ball expanded and contracted in the heat which caused the paint to crack on the drive home.

We got a lot of attention at the con.  We couldn't go more than a few steps without being stopped for pictures.  It was a unique experience to be sure.  In fact, Jason David Frank took our picture while we were getting our picture with him and posted it to his fan page.  It was a humbling experience.  My hubby's Lord Zedd had more problems at the con than we would have liked but we also had the least amount of time to figure things out.  Early failures and new materials/skill set made for a challenging deadline.  It still looked good in the pictures but if we do it again we're going to have to rethink quite a few things.  Almost all of our props and costume pieces need to be repaired or reworked.  My Gracie Law headdress didn't survive a second year either.  I'm going to have to redo all the feathers because of the fall out from this year.  We learned a lot this year and we stepped up our game.  We'll keep getting better.

Attack and Parry

Since I shared with you all about what the Lord did at Crossfire last week and what I learned from it, it is only right that I share the hard bits too.  This week was not a success at Crossfire for me.  I have worked hard to maintain boundaries because I volunteer for more than one organization.  Up until this point, the boundaries have been fine.  Standing stones respected by all the tribal leaders.  It was good *thumps chest*.  This week the stones cracked and fell partly over.  In my haste to assure the tribal leaders that the standing stones still stood for something even if they had fallen, more stones fell.  It was a stone massacre.

The rest of my day was doomed to be an utter failure.  Nothing was going right!  The list of tasks got longer as I failed to accomplish anything.  I was ready to scream, tear my hair out and cry hysterically.  I'm a dramatic person, could you tell?

So..... Here's what I learned:

1. Trying to explain to someone you don't know how to fix something, when you have demonstrated greater skill than them in a tangential area, is unlikely to cause positive results.  They can't believe you because they can't do it and they know you have done things on that computer so you should be able to figure it out or at least know better then them what to do.  
2. I tend to do two very bad things.  When I'm busy and focused, I'm not nice.  I resent every interruption and friendly hello.  I also paint "the whole day" as a failure.  The truth is the whole day wasn't a failure.  More on that later.
3. Failure is a normal part of life and there are plenty of pithy quotes on the subject like "it's not how you fail it's how you proceed".  While those kinds of thoughts are true in my opinion, here's why.  What you focus on will shape and color your thoughts.  If you focus on your failure; your whole day, year, life, will feel like a failure.  If you focus on what God wants to teach you through a difficult circumstance, what you can do something about in the moment, plugging back into your support group or any number of positive and/or real things....well, suddenly (or gradually depending on how deep and long you've plunged into the depths) the false impression trying to define you can be let go.  It's still a choice, and the feelings might linger, but you can end the narrative of your day differently.
4. I didn't want to have Bible Study after the day I had, but everyone of us has at one time or other had a bad day, thought it would be better if we just laid down and hid, and instead chosen to come and been blessed for it.  Not only was I able to share my burden, which helped me release it, but the act of then turning to the Word of God and being reminded of who He is, took the focus off of me and back where it belonged.  It allowed me to ask Him what He wanted me to learn.  I believe part of what God wanted me to learn is that my worth is not bound to my accomplishments.  One of my longest battles has been with pride.  I like doing well and while that in itself isn't a problem, it can be.  It's an internal focus issue.  Yesterday was a reminder that pride does come before a fall.  Not only did I have a false sense of self, so did others. While I can't alter someone else's expectations of my ability, I can proceed in humility.  What a great reminder that I can't do it all and that's okay.  I wasn't designed to do it all.  
5. After many years battling depression, in part for the above two reasons, I have learned to recognize the signs and I know what to do to counteract them.  It's hard.  Very hard.  But today I can start again, prioritize and proceed.  After all, a minion doesn't quit.  They just have an adventure trying to accomplish the task!  
   

I love stories, but several things in my life have reminded me that the heroes, sidekicks, antiheroes and minions all proceed through the story filled with hurtles, hardships, setbacks and failures.  No one skips from start of quest to triumphant ending.  That would be a terrible story.  So today I'm choosing to think of life as an adventure!  Bring on the Fire Swamp!

*EDIT*
Thinking you've learned a good lesson and facing the day thinking you'll be able to keep a good perspective on problems doesn't mean you won't have hard things happen.  Almost cried three times today but I kept it together.  Life is hard sometimes and it takes fortitude.  Especially when there is nothing you can do but wallow or release.  Being reminded of lost dreams while you're being introduced to new lost hopes was not a great follow up to yesterday, but that's what today has brought.  So once again, I have a choice.  I can wallow and sink or I can let it go and tread water.  I know which one I feel like doing, but I also know which one I'm going to chose.