A reality of traveling is that shit will occasionally go wrong, you might lose something, your stuff might get stolen, or things may break. It sucks. But figuring out how to deal with crappy situations while on the road is a must.

The other morning I grabbed my computer to do some work and it wouldn’t turn on. My first reaction was that it was dead, it had a low battery the night before so I plugged that sucker in, but the light on the cord didn’t light up, also, not initially worrisome, sometimes that little light doesn’t come on, that doesn’t mean it’s not charging. I waited a few minutes before hitting the power button, only to get a blank screen. I hit it again, nothing. I started hitting all the keys like a frantic monkey in a lab, but that didn’t work either (surprise surprise). Cue the meltdown, “ahhh what am I going to doooo” I whined. After letting myself get upset about the situation for a few minutes I pulled myself together, and let the logical side of my brain reestablish control.

The first thing I did was look up the nearest Apple Store in Dublin and walk over there. They told me was that my laptop was 7 months out of the warranty, so I’d have to pay for all repairs, and just the diagnostics were going to be 69 euro, and that I’d probably be better off waiting till I got to London to take it into the shop there since I’m leaving so soon anyways.

Rob and I went through any and all possible plans of attack for this problem of never being in a city long enough for the 5-7 business days it usually takes for a repair. Everything from maybe I’ll just buy a new laptop, to Rob taking the computer apart and figuring it out himself, to seeing if I sent it into Apple maybe they could send it back to me somewhere on the road.

My computer is still currently out of commission, my current to take it into the Apple Store in London get the diagnostics done and hopefully it’s something simple enough it can be fixed in the few days we are there. But this also means blog posts will be slow until I get it up and running again. I can’t really edit photos or create graphics on my iPad, I also don’t have a way to get any new photos off my camera. You can still follow along on Instagram though, and hopefully I’ll be back up and running in the next week, fingers crossed!

Things I’ve taken away from this experience:
– Electronics break no matter how well you take care of them.

– Allow yourself to get upset at shitty situations, but then be able to pull yourself together to make logical and educated decisions about what to do about it.

– Come up with several solutions no matter how good, bad, or undesirable they are, that way you’ve always got a plan b.

– Get the 2 year warranty Apple Care.