Technology - How Do I Love Thee?

Let me count the ways.

Even though there's PLENTY to read around here, sometimes we Onions go into something approximating a TIZZ when our email or (worse still) our whole computer system fails.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

What to do?
Who to turn to?
We flap about.

And then the seconds minutes hours tick by, and we realise we are now halfway through a manuscript that has been on our desk - trying to lure our attention away from the computer - for weeks days.

I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need,

Quiet reading time. It’s the business. But sometimes it's so hard to find. Especially when there's an avalanche of unread email to attend to, or editorial reports to write, or draft covers to consider, or book websites to check, or blogs to read - or, you know, the world to stay in touch with.

I love thee with a passion put to use

Yes. Enforced quiet reading time. It should be a bonus. Something to celebrate. But when it is prescribed by technology failure, it is underpinned by a sense of unease. (What am I missing? Who needs my attention? How can I possibly meet that deadline now?)

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

And this feeling is compounded when the almost-completed, due-today, in-progress copy-edited manuscript is locked into a computer system to which there is no access. (*tears hair* *takes deep breath* * has faith* *goes back to reading hard copy of new manuscript*)

And then the computer blinks back on...

Smiles, tears of all my life!