Getting In Over Your Head

Tonight, I got in over my head.  Way over.  I was working on updating a website, and was told I needed to install something.  I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I thought to myself, ‘I’m tech-savy, I can handle this.’  Cut to an hour and a half later, and I have just gotten off the phone with technical support in India because I brought the server down.

I was in over my head.  And I knew it 10 minutes in.  I have been in a cold sweat for the past hour, all the while feeling so hot that I could burst into flames at any moment.  I was uploading files via FTP (don’t ask me to explain it- I don’t know what it is- which should have been my first clue to get out!), and instead of making a back up, I simply copied.  Not a good idea.

Does this kind of thing ever happen to you?  Where you take one step into a land you have never been in before, and before you know it, you are a mile in, not even knowing the direction you came.  I feel like this must be what Alice felt like in Wonderland.  Terrified you have screwed everything up in one single moment.

It’s a horrible feeling, to say the least.  I felt so helpless.  There is a feeling specific to when you try something and you suck.  I don’t mean the ‘at least you tried’ kind of trying something, but the ‘why would you think you could do this?’  I mean- people get degrees in the kind of stuff I was trying tonight.  Well, failing at tonight.  What made me think I could handle it?

Pride.  Pride is a funny thing.  It can fool you, it tells you that you can handle something, that you can not only hold on to the bucking bull for a few seconds, but that you can hang with the professionals.  Of course, you would never say that out loud.

They say the internet can be a scary place.  I might have seen the scariest of all tonight: directories.