I have a confession to make: I've been running on Ubuntu 14.04 up until the end of 2020. I know, I know, it's shocking to see someone running a 6 year old OS in these trying times, but I did it and frankly I kept doing it out of fear. Much of my fear was related to not being able to handle setting up my mail server again (I run a local mail server for imap so I can use multiple clients with it, along with procmail and a forwarding server for smtp). I also run a Logitech Media Server for my music and have various processes that I use for development. I didn't want to break any of these, lest it put me out of commission. Worse, it takes a while for me to re-set these things back up. I fretted about when would be the right time. I agonized. I was afraid that I would break something and then not be able to fix things. I kept creating stories and images in my mind of what might happen and how I wouldn't be able to cope with it.

Then I thought of the times when I was able to handle it, and how much software tries to make things not break. I figured that it would take time, but I would manage to figure it out.

So yesterday I took the plunge. I booted from a new install of Ubuntu 18.04 (parity with the other machines that I have, and that trailing-edge LTS feeling that I love so much) and set about getting things installed. Over time things just started falling into place and later that day I was ready to put the drive into my main machine to fully commit to the new install. It wasn't perfect, and there was some swearing and moments of tension, but I figured out what was going on.

This is just a reminder that sometimes it's not as bad as we make it out to me, and that we can generate a load of stress for ourselves for something that isn't real, and that we can contain should things go wrong.