Kaput

I'd been flipping between phone and laptop for weeks. Apps, plug-ins, projects, tasks. One thing leading to another thing leading to another. The kind of merry-go-round where you know you're exhausted, you know you need to stop, but you don't — because when you work for yourself, nobody's stopping the clock for you.

I went to plug my laptop in. Low battery, nothing unusual. I got up, plugged it in, thought I'd make a cup of tea first. Sat back down.

The laptop wouldn't turn on.

I tried everything. No charging light. The charger wasn't even warm. Kaput. My first thought was my husband throwing the dog’s ball had somehow taken it out. My second thought was: I need a new charger, and I need it today!

Except I couldn’t get it today. I didn't have my husband's passwords for his laptop and if I'm honest, I don't have my own passwords half the time either. There was nothing to be done except order a new charger and wait.

So I stopped.

Not because I chose to. Because a small plastic charger decided the choice wasn't mine to make anymore.

And here's the strange part — I was happy about it.

There's something about being physically stopped, rather than talking yourself into stopping, that works differently. All week I'd known I should slow down. Known it and done nothing with the knowing. It took a dead charger to actually put the laptop away.

Sometimes life doesn't hand you a catastrophe to punish you. It just needs you to stop, and it knows you won't do it yourself.