For all my determination to face the new year on the front foot, the first day of 2013 set me back on my heels. It should have been just the opposite. I was actually looking forward to setting up QuickBooks for The Company, having finally (at the last minute of last year, nearly) got the go-ahead from the Boss to buy the software.

He's been actually more interested than I have in introducing some sort of accounting software to the company, just in case something should happen that would keep me from continuing to use the old system that I set up on a spreadsheet program in 1986. He likes the reports I've put out for 26 years using the old system. Likes them? He loves them, and that's the only thing that's kept him from encouraging (or forcing) me to use commercial software long before this.

But he'll be 74 this year, and I'm only ten years younger, and he's been contemplating the continuity of the company. It's his legacy, after all, something he created more or less from scratch, and his own ingenuity and skills. So now that it's 2013, we're finally ready to face the twenty-first century.

For a while today, I thought I was doing okay. I set aside the holiday to input as much of the company data as I thought I'd need to get going, having bought not one but two manuals, and having gone through them fairly exhaustively over the last few days. I was pretty sure I knew what I had to do, and for a time I seemed to be right. But then I hit a snag, and another snag, and Help was no help and Support was taking the day off. Which, in afterthought, I kind of wish I'd done myself.

Actually, I never intended to do anything but run the new software as a parallel system to the one I've used or so long. I'm still hoping to do that. I managed to input the current payables and receivables. It was only when I got to the payroll section that I started tearing my hair out and looking for something to heave through a picture window.

It shouldn't have surprised me that the payroll function would require a subscription that would cost more than the software (and manuals, don't forget) over the course of the year. It took me a while to make the decision to spend the money, but once I did, the provider couldn't figure out how to accept my payment. I kept getting the same message: that I needed to make a phone call to see what he problem was.

Well, you know how I feel about making phone calls in the first place. And I wasn't even about to try it on a holiday. So after numerous aborted attempts, I gave up. I will make that phone call, probably tomorrow but certainly before the first payroll run of the year. And I hit the wall at an opportune time, when I really needed to quit for the day before I did any actual damage to myself or the picture window.

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Tonight I find myself tired and sore and working at fulfilling my promise to ease up on the intensity that sometimes tears me up. It has taken some time away from everything I put myself through today to start getting past it. It isn't really that big a hurdle, probably. Chances are that a phone call will get me on the right track. I can wish I'd been able to handle it all today, with no help, but I don't have to obsess over solutions. I'll just wait a day, get some distance, and forge onward. I have a lot of experience doing that.