This last week, my laptop’s built-in microphone suddenly disappeared.
One day it worked perfectly. The next, Windows reported “No input devices found,” and Microsoft Teams told me, “No microphone could be found.” After an hour or two of troubleshooting, I discovered I wasn’t alone. Other owners of the same laptop were reporting the identical problem after recent Windows updates. Thank you, Reddit and Acer.
In other words, it wasn’t just me. But before I knew that, my mind had already written a much different story.
For years, I’ve noticed a pattern in myself. When something goes wrong, my first instinct isn’t simply to solve the problem and sometimes drive myself crazy doing so as I probe every possible solution and some that even technology hasn’t yet (I kid there). It’s to imagine all the consequences that might follow.
What if my editor thinks I’m making excuses? What if he thinks I’m unprepared? What if I miss an assignment? What if this costs me work?
None of those things had actually happened. They were simply possibilities my brain promoted to near certainty.
The reality was much less dramatic.
I messaged my editor, explained I was troubleshooting the problem, and his response was essentially, “No worries. I’ll just send you the work.” He even joked that another company we had been waiting to hear from was “the real Final Boss.”
The world didn’t end. The same thing happened on the Friday that just went past. For the first time in a while, I left my phone behind, turned on my out-of-office message, and took an afternoon for myself. Before walking away, part of me wondered what might happen.
What if someone needs me? What if I miss something important? What if there’s an emergency?
A few hours later, I came back. Nothing had happened. No crises. No damaged relationships. A couple of newsletters and a message from Amazon that my delivery was on the way. That’s it.
The world had continued spinning quite happily without me checking my inbox every ten minutes – which is way too often.
I’ve carried an exaggerated sense of responsibility since childhood. Not because other people expect it, but because I expect it from myself. A sick day when I worked in an office? I felt guilty as hell for taking one. I even felt guilty once when I had pneumonia – we’re talking both lungs half-filled with fluid.
If an email arrives, I should answer immediately. If technology breaks, I should fix it instantly. If an editor contacts me, I should never inconvenience them. If work exists, I should probably be doing it. Even potential work.
Those are impossible standards to live by because they assume perfection in an imperfect world. Maybe that is part of the reason I started going gray in my early twenties.
Technology fails, and servers go down. Microphones disappear, and people get sick. People with one or more kids take a day off just to spend time with their families and don’t feel bad about it. Internet connections drop.
None of these things are personal. The interesting part is how differently I judge other people. If a colleague’s microphone stops working, I don’t think they’re irresponsible. If someone replies to my email the next morning instead of immediately, I don’t assume they’re lazy. If a friend takes an afternoon off, I don’t question their commitment.
I naturally extend grace to other people. I just don’t always extend it to myself.
That realization connects with another tendency I’ve written about before: my all-or-nothing thinking.
Somewhere and somehow, I developed an internal rule that says I should always be available, always productive, always solving problems, and always one step ahead. Maybe it comes from my tight deadline golf reporting. Maybe it comes from a former colleague who marked 90% of his emails as high importance, even though maybe one in a thousand were actually important and time-sensitive. It may come from thinking I always have to be here for people and that I must, not could, help them solve their problems. Or it could be that I’m just hardwired that way and the best I can do is manage it, not fix it.
Real life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you’ve done everything you reasonably can.
That’s another lesson this week reinforced. There comes a point in every problem where the returns diminish.
The first thirty minutes of troubleshooting are productive. The next thirty might uncover another clue. But after a while, fatigue sets in. You begin to repeat the same steps, read the same articles, second-guess yourself, and become increasingly frustrated.
Ironically, that’s often the worst time to continue.
Walking away isn’t quitting; it’s recognizing that a tired brain rarely solves problems as well as a rested one.
The microphone issue will still be there tomorrow, or a patch will be sent and everything will be back to normal. The software update will still exist tomorrow.
The solution, if there is one, will still be there tomorrow. Stepping away isn’t abandoning the problem; it’s giving yourself the best chance to solve it.
I also thought about the editors I work with.
One has a young family. Another has a full life outside work. They work hard, but they also stop working. They don’t seem to carry the belief that every unanswered email is a five-alarm fire.
Work is important but it isn’t everything.
That’s a healthier perspective than the one I’ve often carried.
I’m slowly learning that professionalism isn’t measured by constant availability or by never encountering problems.
It’s measured by communicating honestly, doing your best, adapting when things go wrong, and remembering that nobody – not even the most organized editor or the most experienced freelancer – gets through life without the occasional technology failure.
The microphone reminded me of something much bigger than a driver problem.
Sometimes the real issue isn’t the computer. It’s the story I tell myself as I try to fix it.
johnberkovich.com 