Last Sunday in church I was in charge of children’s time during the worship service. I wanted to show the kids some photos so I made some prints to show them when they gathered up front, but I also had slides ready to be projected so the whole congregation could see.

That is, I thought I did. When it came time to show the pictures there was a big blank on the screen and a lot of scrambling by the A-V crew. Nothing. One of them was seen on the high balcony catwalk where the projector sits. “What’s he doing up there?” a friend told me she asked her husband. “Praying,” he said.

It was a good thing I had the prints. “I’ll show you pictures that nobody else can see,” I told the kids. It was fine.

This is not unusual. In fact I think I can safely say that I have never NOT had problems with technology when I am doing a presentation, whether in church or elsewhere. I have come to believe that a Tech Demon follows me around.

Our church technology always works flawlessly, but not for me. I’ve usually assumed that I am doing something wrong or my system is incompatible with the church system. But this time I had kept my hands entirely off the process. I had sent my pix to the church administrator, who had made them into a Power Point, loaded them into the projector, and then tried to project them. Nada. Zilch.

I approach new technologies, thus, with trepidation, whether it is my new iPhone or a new piece of software, or even a new version of the software, or even a new social networking thing to do, like Pinterest. It is like walking into a maze of multiple levels of abstract connections, in a fog, blindfolded. I’m always crashing into things and crashing things. I get frustrated and anxious and panicky until, after much trial and error, I find my way around.

Last week the Tech Demon started playing with this blog and made the format incompatible, on my Mac, with my preferred browser, Firefox. Nothing I do fixes it. I am taking it personally. He didn’t mess with Safari or with Firefox on a PC.

Still, I depend a lot on technology. How can I not? Here I am, blogging. It is one of my favorite things to do. But, aside from the Firefox sickness, I am well over the learning curve with this blog.

I have, however, taken it upon myself to start another blog, which will be quite different from this one in design and content. I am not going to give you the link right now because it is still very much under construction.

Of course, I am running into a number of difficulties setting it up. Every glitch brings that clutch of panic to my chest, my stomach heaves with anxiety. Aaaaak! One of these days the tightening in my chest will be real and I will keel over, dead of a tech-attack.

But meanwhile, I sort it out. I get things to work, kind of. But doing that drains all my energy and causes me to eat a series of very large snacks. If this goes on much longer I will become tech-obese. Gimme a break!

I get one. My pregnant daughter calls and asks for help with childcare and housework for a few days. Hurray! I will leave my computer and the new blog project at home to stew in their own juices. Maybe the Tech Demon will slink back to deep cyberspace and all the technology will be healed by the time I get back.