Earlier today, I had a problem with Eskimo North’s servers, and the way everything interacts, a problem with one pretty much made them all sick so I had a very difficult time trying to diagnose and correct the problem.

Those that know me know I’m prone to anxiety and panic and when I couldn’t quickly resolve the problem I felt panic set in.

But today was different, I said a little prayer, God please help me sort this out and with that I was able to get myself in a state where I was able to accept that, whatever happened, whatever direction things took me in, God would be there.

And that allowed me to calm down and take things methodically.  I shut down all the problematic machines, then brought things up one at a time, first the file server everything depended upon, then name servers and NIS servers, then shellx, ftp/www, radius servers, and so forth, until only one server remained and that was the new mail server.

I hadn’t allocated enough memory to it and when it got into heavy swap that affected all the other virtual machines.

For me that has always been the big challenge, handling the emotional strain when things go wrong, or sometimes just the sense of loss of things and more importantly people in my past that are gone.

Tonight, I watched a Beatles concert that was performed in Melbourne Australia in 1964, and memories of that time became so clear that it seemed like 50 years have just flown by in a second.

It seems like my time on this planet will be over soon, even if it’s another 50 years, which is unlikely, the last 50 have gone by so fast, and I’m afraid, afraid of the loss of other people I love, afraid I’ll screw up and not be with God, afraid I’ll never see my daughter or youngest son again, afraid of the pain of growing old, afraid of the world my children will inherit.

When I was young I used to swim in Green Lake and Lake Washington, now both of those lakes are so foul I wouldn’t think of it.  Green Lake is clogged with algae and other nasty things, Lake Washington is clogged with weeds on what used to be nice beaches in Kirkland.

I fear going to sleep because sleep lately has been plagued with nightmares. But I must, need to be up at 5AM.

So I feel like at least for an instant, when it mattered, I managed to get a little control over my emotions today, but now that it’s time to go to sleep they’re winning the battle again.