I'm a technological dunce.
This is why my head is spinning, my mouth is dry; panic is down the street heading for me at brake neck speed.
Why? Because our editor, Alexis Fitts, is taking a week off, heading back to her hometown of Philadelphia for the Holidays.
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That's the good news—at least for her.
The bad news is I am to be the "guest editor" of Sonoma Patch until a week from Sunday. I spent the better part of Thursday morning in an intense training session on how to do all of the technological things necessary to produce a 24-7 online newspapers: download stories, upload stories, take photos, edit photos, upload photos, and on and on. Each are controlled by this or that icon at the top of the Sonoma Patch page set up for editors and meant to easily facilitate the job of getting stories, columns, etc. in the proper shape for publication. The operative synonym for facilitate in my case is: Yikes!
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Right now, 30-minutes since I ran out of steam at my training session, I am—at the risk of serious understatement—overwhelmed. OK, I'm taking deep slow breaths, wishing I had not let my anti-anxiety medication lapse, and doubling wishing I could remember one cogent piece of information that was poured into my technologically clueless mind. It will all come back to me. I'm sure it will. No I'm not. Hopefully, it will. Sure it will. Inhale—one, two, three, four—exhale.
Maybe I should breathe into a small bag; that's suppose to work.
It worked for Burt Reynolds in the movie, "Starting Over." Worth a shot: inhale--one, two, three, four—exhale; inhale…………
Great. I'm back. Feeling much better. What a baby I have been. I have been in journalism a long time; had to learn a bunch of new things over the course of 35 years. Remember that switch from manual typewriters to electric typewriters. Murder at first, but hey, I got with the program. I am, after all, a survivor.
Tomorrow Alexis is dropping off to me her shiny, newish Mac (mine is old and shorts out frequently), a camera, and a bunch of other stuff that connects one gismo to another (gismo being my generic name for high tech devices). I will be outfitted, patted on the back and told to go out there and win one for the Gipper (Ronald Reagan was the Gipper in the movie, a tearjerker if ever there was one). Speaking of tears and movies and plays (we were weren't we?), don't cry for me Argentina.
I ready, I'm fit, I'm tanned. I am ready, as Sarah Palin might put it, to "man-up."
Bravado?
Inhale—one, two, three, four…………..
