I was walking around my yard today, enjoying a bit of sunshine, and look what I found!

Such a glorious ending to a few not-so-pleasant days. Oh, I’m fine, there’s nothing really wrong, I’ve just had to deal with changing my primary email address as well as wherever I used that email for online sites. This change wasn’t by choice and I’m not happy about it, but it was necessary.

A few years ago, the free email that was provided by my website domain provider was changed to a paid Outlook account. I was so daunted by the idea of making the change, that when I got a good deal on Outlook, I went ahead and paid ahead for several years. (Money that is now wasted.) I’ve gradually been changing over as I open new accounts or lose friends or whatever, but last week Microsoft informed me I would have to download an authenticator to my phone so I can continue using the email account. The bizarre thing is that this particular email was never able to be downloaded to my phone, and the authenticator doesn’t work for PCs, so they were demanding something utterly unnecessary. I was supposed to have two weeks until the authenticator was mandatory, but since I knew how discouraging the whole process would be, I started immediately to do the work. Good thing. Instead of having two weeks, I ended up with a single week. Luckily, I think I got everything, and if I didn’t, I will just have to presume it’s not important.

Along the way, as I had to update accounts, I ended up deleting one or two. Pinterest, for example. I never did understand that site, and when I tried to update the email address, they wouldn’t do it unless I provided a date of birth. I gave a fake one, of course, then when I was finally able to access the site, I deleted the whole thing.

At least, that was easy. Worse, I found two places for my online banking where I needed to change the address but alerts still went to my old address. I had to call to the bank to get them find the third place. Both the gas company and the internet company had those same issues. One important account had nowhere to change the address, so another call. And then, of course, there were all those places where I used a different email address but used my primary one for backup.

With any luck, I made all the changes, but oh! What a mess!

Then, considering that Microsoft was the company that put me in this situation, I decided I needed to back up all my pictures and documents elsewhere in case they do the same thing with that email. I had used OneDrive to back up my previous computer just because it was an easy way to move them to my new computer. (Which, come to think of it, is now elderly in computer years.) And then, because I was in a snippy mood, I ended up deleting photos and documents I haven’t looked at in years. (Snippy meaning not happy, snippy meaning feeling like snipping things away.)

So, finding those sunny crocus faces beaming at me this morning sure made my day brighter.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.