Paradise Sometimes has its Price

Good Morning and a Happy Fri-Yay to you all!  I often say that “Paradise has its Price.”  St. John is, in my heart, the most beautiful place on earth.  The people, the food, the views, the community…It’s all just kind of perfect for me. But, it does come with its minor inconveniences.   And yesterday was a solid example of that statement.

I had scheduled my one full office day of the week for Thursday and planned to knock out a bunch of research, get some posts uploaded and and ready to go and get cranking on some design work that has been collecting dust (and anxiety!) on my desk.  All of which require connectivity.  I woke up early yesterday, hit send on the BVI update, posted it to social media…And then the internet went down.

I tried calling my generally reliable provider, VIYA, multiple times to just make sure I hadn’t forgotten to pay my bill and all four of their phone lines were doing weird things.  My phone doesn’t work past texting in my cement block of an apartment in the gut, so I walked up to the parking lot to try to get online and figure out what was going on.  Apparently, AT&T was doing some work on St. Thomas and cut an underground cable, knocking out VIYA and all of the phone, TV and internet services it provides AND the Love City Community Network.  It additionally affected the T-Mobile tower, leaving AT&T as virtually the ONLY source of reliable connectivity on St. John.  FOR OVER EIGHT HOURS!

In addition to flipping my hopeful day of productivity upside down, it also rendered most businesses on St. John the inability to accept credit card payments, play music or television, etc.  But, hey, we have risen to the challenge of living without connectivity (and power and running water) on this little rock before.  And for about 60 times that eight hour time frame.  So, this is a pretty small problem in the grand scheme of the problems in the world and instead of dwindling on what I wasn’t getting done, I took to editing some photos that led to a little blue water escape from what was previously going to be a whirlwind of a work day.

Moral of the story?  In the midst of all of this, I called my good friend, Erin Hart to see  if she had heard anything about the internet service being down.  She hadn’t, but my perpetually positive and beautiful musician friend told me about her to do lists.  One of which being for things that she didn’t believe she could control…A to do list for the universe to take care of.  I love this.  You see, the pesky internet situation was definitely an inconvenience.   But, it was out of my control.  And it was no body else’s fault.  So, I put that on my universe to-do list and switched directions, restaurants and other businesses went to cash only, residents played hooky and went to the beach.  We’ve done this before and we got this.

So, the next time something sets you back that is out of your control…Your flight is late, the ferry is full, your rental car MIA…Take a deep breath, put it on your universe to do list and let it go….And do what you can do within your own control.  It will right itself eventually 🙂  And, I urge you, if you are visiting, be aware that these things happen here…please be patient with the businesses and their staff!  They’re equally feeling the inconveniences…I promise.  Hey, VIYA was back up and running by 6:30PM yesterday.  And by that time, I was having a Dark & Stormy at High Tide feeling proud about the pictures that I had finally tackled!  Enjoy the views!

I hope that you all take whatever comes your way today with grace and flexibility and that you have an absolutely fabulous weekend!