Fem365: Fitness. Food. Femininity.

I’m not a big fan of stuffing emotions. I’m a talker. I like to get it out there, I like a good cry, sometimes I even let loose a bellow or two. But sometimes it’s better to just let it go.

Our Internet has been down for three weeks. Three weeks ago, our router went out the same day a salesman came to our house and told us that his company could get us a faster Internet connection. We were overjoyed with our luck! We signed up with the new company, and the next day we terminated our contract with our former provider. Our former provider had given us a laughably slow connection over the past year – 300 kBit/sec (slower than dial-up)!

Yesterday, we had our new router installed and our new contract activated. For the last three weeks we have been making trips to the computer lab at the library and using my husband’s “portable hotspot” connection (which constantly goes out) in order to piece together Internet sessions. We tolerated this three-week lapse in Internet service because of the lure of the (promised) faster Internet speed… Unfortunately, we were duped. Our Internet speed will remain exactly as it was before we paid 200 euro to break our contract with our former Internet provider.

We (my husband and I) tried getting mad at our new service provider, we tried bargaining, we tried pouting… And after all else failed we tried blaming it on the fact that we’re foreigners in Germany (“we were taken advantage of!” we said to each other… And to be honest, we probably were… But that’s another story). As it turns out, there is nothing that can be done. We settled on paying an additional monthly fee to use a device (currently en route) that will supposedly increase our speed to a fraction of what we were promised (but still faster than what we’re currently getting).

We have made ourselves crazy over our Internet connection over the past year, and after this bust of an experiment, we were seething. But is a faster connection worth life-diminishing stress, anger, and anxiety? Sometimes it is important to fight, but other times there’s grace in letting go.

Today, when things go wrong (or at least, not as planned), smile instead of scream. Say, “that’s fine” instead of cursing, and move on. Learn a lesson, remember that “this too shall pass,” and take it easy. Easier said than done, I know…