My contact manager, Outlook, won't open. It doesn't care how often I click. It says it's loading. But it's lying.

Realization spreads through me like a slow poison. My entire life is in Outlook. Not in my phone like a normal person. With the phone, a quick trip to the Apple Store, and a teenager can make it all better. But Outlook is Microsoft. Secretive. Reclusive. I can't just show up on Bill Gates' porch with my computer. (Not after the last time, I can't.) Outlook has all my appointments, emails, contact info and key details on virtually everyone I've dealt with over the last 25 years! Everything's sitting in the Outlook PST file, which only Outlook can read.

I click the icon again. The program hasn't healed. Google, like an annoying bystander, makes suggestions that don't work. I try them all, or at least the ones that match up with reality. Since getting AI, Google has developed an imagination. It doesn't help.

Resetting Outlook could fix the problem, but "all your settings will vanish." I'd rather lose a kidney. (And I only have one.) There are things I understand in this life. I understand, for example, why no one ever launched a Ted Cruz Charm School franchise. But I don't understand why forgetting my handkerchief makes my nose run. And I don't understand the tangled maze of arcane settings that coordinate my various emails and devices. I built it, but I'm virtually certain that — lacking divine intervention — I could never recreate it.

Still, I run out of options. Desperately, I click reset. Nothing happens. Zero. I could reinstall Outlook, but I'd need the numeric activation key. The key, of course, is in Outlook.

I could just buy the latest version of Outlook. Well, no, I couldn't actually buy it. It's not for sale. I could subscribe and make payments for the rest of my life. Oh, and by the way, it can't handle Outlook PST files. Nobody's current data will work on it. Customer service, a la Microsoft.

Obviously, either my copy of Outlook or its PST file must be corrupted. But I can't keep Outlook from trying to open the file without getting into Outlook. Then, in a stroke of genius that would have occurred to a chimpanzee at least a day earlier, I RENAME THE FILE! I click the Outlook icon for the seventh thousandth time. A message box opens. It's a note from Outlook. It can't find the file. Another box opens and asks if I'd like to use another Outlook file. Yes, I would. I try the backup copy.

Outlook OPENS! Church bells ring out across the land. My emails aren't working — some idiot must have reset Outlook. But giddy with success, I spend another full day trying to reconfigure my email accounts. Eventually, somehow — accidentally or through heavenly intervention — I click "send/receive all folders" and the blessed green bar successfully checks through each email account.

To verify my genius, I send myself a test email from another account. Unfortunately, examining miracles too closely risks divine displeasure. The email never shows up. I send an email from Outlook. It disappears but never gets listed in the sent folder. Outlook is functioning, but both incoming and outgoing emails are vanishing into techno-hell along with my last hope for a rational cosmos.

Enough! If anyone needs me, I'll be on Bill Gates' porch.

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