SERENDIPITY REDUX

I was terrified.

Was it a big hairy spider? A home invader? A tornado? A threatened lawsuit? A burst pipe? A volcanic eruption (in New England, that would really be something else!) ... ?

No. My computer refused to boot. It got to the "welcome" screen then just sat there. Going around and around and around. It has never done that. It was fine when we left to go to the grocery store. No blue screens of death or anything at all. It was computering along uncomplaining. Fine, thank you.

But. It. Would. Not. Boot.

I put it in "safe mode with networking" and restored it to the last save point ... two days ago. And now, it's fine again. No idea what happened except for a tiny, brief message that said "new drivers installed" then vanished -- this while it was in "safe mode." What drivers? I didn't install any new equipment and the only driver I regularly upgrade is for my graphics card.

So I have no idea what happened, but my heart is pounding and I've got a headache. I think my blood pressure just went into the stratosphere.

Although the computer is essential to my life, in fact everything on it would be easy enough to restore. Photographs and documents are safely stored on two external hard drives. My virtual life is on various clouds somewhere out in the Ether World -- WordPress, Google, the bank, Amazon and probably a few others I can't think of offhand. Other than Photoshop which I have on DVD, all my software is easy enough to replace by downloading.  Yet having my computer not boot filled me with dread and a horrible feeling of powerlessness. I think I'm less afraid of spiders ... and that's saying something because I'm really phobic about arachnids.

I will never know what happened. A virus? A bad download? Nothing is supposed to download to this system without my permission. It's one of the reasons I don't like Windows 10. You can't turn off automatic downloads. I hate when things happen and I have no control over them.

If I wasn't sure how important my computer is in my world, this absolutely showed me the bare, ugly truth. I need my computer like I need air. How did it come to this?

And wasn't it a long way down.