This isn't the post that I was supposed to be writing today. This isn't the entry that is scheduled in my editorial calendar (a schedule of posts that I make at the beginning of each month). It's because today I am working with a handicap, a temporary handicap.

The handicap has made it so that what should have taken 30 seconds to type the above paragraph took at least two minutes.

And even as I write this sentence I realize how ridiculous I just sounded. Really Sandy? Shame on you, there are people struggling with worse and do not consider it the end of the world because it is taking longer.
I am extremely embarrassed. This morning the second I realized I'd be working with this handicap I marched my frustrations to a Facebook status! I harped on about how annoying it is that I need to deal with this today, and how irritating the results of the handicap are..  I reacted without thinking.

Broadly speaking a 'handicap' is something that makes success more difficult. But I'm not entering into a competition today, I'm not competing against anyone else, and aside from my usual low-key Tuesday schedule - there isn't anything specific that I need to bank my success on today. In other words, my perceptions of this extremely minor glitch was skewed by the fact that I'm the one competing against myself! 

So what's going on?? You're probably wondering. Here:
This morning I realized the "l" key, the key for the period, and the right arrow key decided to cease responding to the every beck and call of my finger tips on my keyboard. In my mind I had an image of myself copy-pasting every "l" and "." into all that I would have to write today -- and trust me, I write a lot. Then I quickly ran through all my possible solutions: Well I could use Dragon Speak, I could borrow a keyboard and plug it into the USB port, I could use the on-screen keyboard application...And then I calmed down a bit.

I'm the one who decided it would be frustrating to have to put-up with this today. I'm the one who decided to get frustrated because it would take a bit longer for me to get things done today. And I'm the one who decided that this is going to put undue burden on whatever 'success' I was supposed to have today.

But it doesn't need to be that way. I can take the time to work through this silly technological hiccup, I can also take this time to double and triple look-over the things that I write, and I can take the time to understand that a handicap is only perceived as such when we choose to think of it as one.