This is not my original post. I have some intense money posts planned for the coming days, but today I just have to talk about the pain of losing something I love.

I never realized how important a certain thing was to my mood until it was gone:

Two days ago, I opened up a bottle of fizzy water and it exploded. What I thought was a small amount of water hit the keyboard of my laptop.

I immediately wiped off the water and put a washcloth on the keyboard to absorb any remaining water. The computer seemed fine. Everything was working perfectly. So I forgot all about it. I went to the hotel gym for the next 45 minutes. When I came back upstairs, a few keys on my keyboard wouldn’t work.

I freaked out. I googled every possible forum on how to get keyboards working again. I turned my laptop upside down. I put it near the air vent in the hotel room (Im working an auto show in Philly). I gave it time. Nothing has happened. My keys (including the spacebar, delete, and tab key- all pretty important) haven’t returned to usability.

My poor, hurt Mac Air has left me sad and hurting for it.

Since I’m out of town and working all day most days, I haven’t yet taken the laptop to the Apple Store. I’ve heard it’s too expensive to have them fix it anyway (it’s out of warranty), so I’ve been googling about other ways to fix it. No definite decisions yet.

I was out at dinner tonight with my friend Kate and I realized how much the hurt laptop was affecting my mood. She was talking about her injured cat and dog and I was talking about my injured laptop. Staring at it upside down by my airvent made me not even want to be in my hotel room anymore. It completely changed the happy mood of getting off work and relaxing at ‘home.’

I hadn’t felt so upset about a computer since college, when I had to spend two hundred dollars or so (my life savings at the time) to fix an errant Dell laptop that went kaput. Tonight I didn’t realize how overblown my emotions about the computer were until I was lamenting my sadness about the computer to Kate, and mentioned how I had to use copy/paste to put spaces between words because of my broken spacebar. She started laughing hysterically (though sympathetically).

And then the food arrived and we laughed even harder at how her food was served in a pineapple.

I suddenly realized that I was missing all the fun of the present moment. I was having tons of fun with a friend I barely see and most of my thoughts were still bordering on obsession with fixing the laptop.

Now that I’m thirty I would hope I could put problems in relative perspective, but apparently little things can happen that still throw me completely off balance. Talking with Kate helped me feel lighter about the whole thing.

Of course I still feel my obsession with the broken keyboard hovering over my other thoughts. And I never think of myself as a very obsessive person.

I’m typing this using a combination of my phone, speech to text (which is something I didn’t know I could do in WordPress), and copy/pasting all spaces. Itshardtogowithoutspacebarordeleteortab.I’ve learned a lot about replacing a keyboard and exactly why my techie ex-boyfriend used to get upset at me for any drinks being within 10 feet of either of our laptops. I learned that even though I hate typing on a phone, it can be done. Im learning and adapting. I’m trying to laugh at myself and the whole situation.

But I must admit, it’s a challenge. Even at 30. Or maybe even more at 30- I’m attached to a certain thing being around and working well, and when it’s not, a whole week can feel messed up. Or a whole two days that feel like a week.

I think it helps to develop an awareness of the little things that can change your mood completely. So then, when youre upset, you can figure out why and break it down.

What do you think? Are there little things you rely upon that would change your days completely if removed or broken? Can you combat this by talking about it or shedding light on it? Do you find yourself taking seemingly ‘little things’ in your life way too seriously?