Last week, I accidentally erased some of Jen's email as we were trying to diagnose a previous problem. I still don't know exactly how or why it happened, but I do know when. I deleted an old account that was somehow serving as the Library setting for her current account. Jen hates deleting anything, so she asked, "Are you sure we should do this?" and I quickly responded, "Sure. You don't use this account and there's nothing in it."
I also remember feeling impatient. I don't feel frustrated or anthropomorphize broken gadgets into bad guys. It's more like being eager to tinker and find out what works. It's fun to figure things out and machines are figureoutable. You may stop looking, but you can be sure that an answer exists. That's why I repeatedly disassembled our phones as a child and prepared for work in the IT department at Morgan Stanley by reading about medieval Italian banking and the nature of electricity. (This is an excellent site if you're interested.)
Mac Repair salvaged what they could, but in the end, I permanently erased two weeks of Jen's mail. My only defense is that I was in some sort of engineering fugue state. Men in particular seem susceptible to these outbreaks of blind overconfidence, especially when it comes to traditionally masculine topics, which makes us (among other things) worse investors than women.
While we were waiting at the repair shop, I happened to be reading a kindlet that contained one of Captain Bligh's last messages sent from the Bounty and I think it works as a general credo for Male Pattern Overconfidence:
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