Last week it was an over-abundance of conflicting and confusing email addresses and apps. This week, the list grows. In my effort to pare down my numerous emails, it appears that I somehow have managed to create another one. I don't really know how I did it, but I did! Since it is linked up to some of my vital accounts, I am reluctant to try and undo whatever it is that I did.
If I only knew what I did in the first place.
Still in the throes of email woes (I like how that rhymes), I have discovered a troubling new technology issue, one more vital than my emails. My calendar stopped sharing and syncing. I like to call it "That Syncing Feeling," but perhaps it is better described as "That Non-Syncing Feeling." It is not sharing well with others. Heck, it is not sharing well with my own devices. Whatever you call it, my calendars are failing kindergarten.
I noticed it today when I added an event on my phone. There seemed to be a new calendar category. I hadn't created one. Could it have come from a recent update on my phone? Might it be a product of my mysterious email creation? All I know is I added an event on what appeared to be an empty day.
That should have been my tip off that something was very, very wrong. Empty days simply don't exist as far as the calendar goes. Unless you are looking at a date in 2021, but even as far out as that may seem, there are events on the books. I can only surmise that I am very thick.
So fast forward to later in the day while I was working on my computer and received an alert notification for a reminder I had scheduled on one of my calendars. When I went to the calendar to peruse the details, I was distracted by the amount of days that had no events. None. Not even the one I had entered earlier in the day.
That couldn't be right.
I looked at my phone, I looked at the computer. I looked at the phone again. Nope, they didn't match. So I started to investigate. I have a few different calendars (all through the same service), some of which I make public, and some of which I keep private. Because who really needs to know when I had my period or when my last mammogram was, right? None of my calendars seemed to be syncing properly due to the addition of a new email on an existing account that I didn't really want. All the stuff that had been entered back when there was only ONE email still showed in both places, but the new stuff entered after the accidental technology tourist when traveling and created an additional identity, well, it appeared here OR there.
This clearly wasn't going to work. Not only do I rely on being able to pull up my calendar on multiple devices during my day, but my calendar was synced to other users for cleaner scheduling purposes. Just as I am synced to other individuals calendars for the same reason. If I were not syncing properly with myself, was I syncing properly with others?
Did I just say what I think I said?
I would throw all this in the kitchen sink and start from scratch right now, but it would take me into the kitchen, and there we have a large appliance that no longer works to keep food cold and is now serving as a cabinet that lights up when you open the doors. I am so not going in the kitchen, not even to put all this technology down the drain and turn on the garbage disposal, no matter how tempted I might be.
The only answer to my problem was to slog through the bog of technology and see if I could figure out the answer to my latest challenge. The Internet suggested trying another app, but I didn't want to do that. I had previously been quite successful with the apps I had! After tentatively trying a few things on my own (like adding calendars, deleting newly made calendars, changing which calendar I applied to an event) I broke down and did another search on the Internet. I determined that I did have the sync option on, that I was hooked to WI-FI on all my devices, and that I was signed in to my primary account on all my devices. Google(tm) is usually one of my best friends, but I was disappointed to find that either my search was too weak, worded incorrectly, or I was the only person in the entire universe having this problem.
It isn't easy being techno-challenged.
Via my education through the help center, I came to the deduction that the addition of an email address to my account should not have affected my account syncing whatsoever. Except that it did. I would attach the picture of myself making nasty faces at my computer, but that was when I discovered that my issues also extended to my photos syncing between devices. Or rather, not syncing.
Gosh, thank heavens I don't have anything else to do...like work on the remodel of our kitchen (because that is what you are supposed to do when one appliance breaks down), or wash the clothes, or pay the bills, or run some errands, or (gasp) work on my writing. It would take me some time to straighten out this mess.
I started with my smarter than me phone. I made sure that in each app I used, my new and improved email address now embedded in my primary account, was set up for syncing. I then repeated the process with each device, checking out each of the individual apps for compliance, continually fighting the urge to light a match and test it out on the technology. My final result: I was now syncing smoothly. At least with myself.
As to whether I will be in sync with other people, that has yet to be tested.
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