But the disconnection issues continued. Within a week I was on the phone to Bell South to switch my lines back with them. I spent about an hour talking to a very nice representative answering various questions. At the end of the call, she said, “We need the information you have given me verified by a third party.” I was running out of time and needed to finish up to go on the air. I thought I would answer the final questions and be on my merry way, but the third-party verifier said her information showed I was only transferring one line. I said, “No, I am transferring two lines.”
We argued back and forth, and I realized I couldn’t solve this unexpected issue in one minute. I would have to cancel the entire request for the switch in service and redo the process the next day. I couldn’t risk having only one active phone line. I needed two active lines to caption. I told the representative, “If you can’t transfer both lines over, then cancel the order and I will start it all over tomorrow.”
The next morning, I called Bell South again. The woman on the line said, “Oh, it just shows up as one phone line, but it’s really two. The people that do the verification don’t know that.” And she said, “We can just undo the cancellation.” I said, “Great.” I had better things to do with my time than spending it redoing what I had already done the night before.

Fast forward two weeks. The disconnects continued, and I was forced to fill out far too many discrepancy reports. In the meantime, while I was waiting for the lines to be switched back, I discovered that my iPhone would not let me send out emails. I needed it to work because I was going out of town. I called Cox Cable to verify what the strange settings were I needed for my iPhone. The representative from Cox Cable convinced me to reset my settings on my Office Outlook back to what they were before I added the phone lines. I was skeptical about changing them, but I sent myself a verification email that came back to me promptly, so I assumed incorrectly she was right and knew more than I did.
I changed the settings on Microsoft Outlook as she instructed. I then called AT&T to put the settings back to what they were before on the iPhone. I had changed them trying to get the iPhone to work with the new settings for Microsoft Outlook. I spent a couple of hours on the phone with AT&T. Once this was accomplished, I thought everything on my email would be back to the way it was originally.
Later that evening, I went to the computer to check my emails. Once again, I couldn’t send out emails. It was late at night and there was nothing I could do about it except being frustrated.
Over the course of the ensuing weekend, I talked to several representatives at Cox Cable trying to find somebody who could change the settings to allow me to send emails. Most of them told me, “We don’t support Outlook.” By now I was approaching my limit of “niceness.” But I was going out of town, couldn’t take my computer with me, and figured I could send emails off my iPhone; not very efficient, but better than nothing. I would live with the inconvenience until the following Tuesday (this was on a Friday) when my phone lines were scheduled to be switched back to Bell South. With the settings I had, my Microsoft Outlook should work by then. I would be patient, even though I was frustrated.
Tuesday came and went, and nothing seemed to happen with the phones—except I continued to have disconnects. ESPNews had called twice about the number of disconnects during my programming. I had filled out about thirty discrepancy reports for lost air time with various companies for which I worked. I was concerned when nothing seemed different and was getting more paranoid. I called Bell South on Wednesday to ask if they had switched the phone lines and was told, “You canceled it two weeks ago.” When I told the representative that the woman said she would un-cancel it for me and that the lines would be switched in two weeks, she said, “You can’t un-cancel a cancellation.”
Now, I was angry. All this time I thought things were in process for the switch. Two weeks later, I had to start all over again. I spent an hour on the phone, going through the questions and answers the second time. I thought everything was taken care of now. But an hour later, I got a phone call, “The verification wasn’t done right. We need to redo it.” I said, “Okay,” and redid the verification a third time. “This is the final time,” I told myself, again.
A few hours later I returned home to a waiting message on my phone, “We need to verify the switch again. It wasn’t done correctly.” I wondered which verification was done wrong; the second one, the third one, or both? I called Bell South and told them, “I am fixing to go on the air, so I need to do this quickly.” They put me on hold and I assume forgot about me. I hung up and dialed in for my show, angry at the inability to accomplish something so simple yet so important.
The next day I was headed out of town and had no time to call Bell South. I was still unable to send emails out of Office Outlook. This was a big inconvenience because I receive over two hundred emails on a normal day. I continued to have disconnection issues while captioning. But I couldn’t do anything about it until Monday.
First thing Monday morning I made the dreaded call to Bell South. How many verifications did I need to do to get it right? After going through the whole story once again, the representative told me the switch had already been made on one line and the switch on the other line would be made in one week.
I was still experiencing disconnects on the line that supposedly had been switched so I was concerned. The representative from Bell South connected me with the technical department to see what could be causing the issue. I gave that person the number with which I was having issues. To my dismay, she told me, “That number is disconnected.”
Now I wondered who the blankety-blank was providing my crappy service on that line. I yelled at the poor woman and demanded to speak to a supervisor. While I was on hold, I dialed out to make sure the line was still working. I got a dial tone. Soon a woman who was “Ms. Control” came on the phone and was everything but helpful. Because she wouldn’t listen to me, I asked to speak to someone else, and then I was disconnected. I couldn’t imagine why.
I called Bell South back and got disconnected again. I called a third time (what else could I do), and explained all over again what I had been through to another person who knew nothing. She listened, put me on hold, and came back and told me that the line had not been switched yet. She said, “I was told by the technical department it looks like it’s disconnected because it is still in the process of being switched back.” In other words, they hadn’t received the paperwork yet. This was different from what I was told earlier, which probably explained why I was still having issues. The line was on Cox Cable’s equipment.
Tonight, as I sit here, I hope she is right and that my lines will be switched next Monday, as promised, and I will still have a job.
I was too worried to wait a whole week for my Office Outlook to work properly. I called Cox Cable and demanded they find somebody who could fix it to where I could send emails. I heard the usual run-around, “We don’t support Outlook.”
I gave them my angst, “You said switching the lines would not affect my email service, you made it possible for me to receive emails until your representative changed it to where it would no longer work, and I demand you find somebody to fix my Office Outlook NOW.” I was put on hold for too long, and then told a technical person would call me back shortly.
I waited two hours and no one called. So I took Joy to her gymnastics class. While driving, my phone rang. Of course, it was the Cox Cable technical support, now that I couldn’t talk. I asked him to call me back in fifteen minutes; I dropped Joy off and hurried home. A few minutes later, we connected on the phone. In lightning fashion, even faster than I thought possible, he fixed the issue. It’s amazing how quickly something can be done by competent people. As of right now, I am able to send from Outlook, though, of course, I still can’t send from my iPhone.
The almost end of the story is the bill I just received–$250 for the two phone lines. My Bell South bill in December was $154. The plan was to switch to Cox Cable and bundle my services so I could save $30 a month. When I asked the Cox representative about the higher-than-expected bill, she said, “Well, this isn’t a bundle.” I asked her why in the world I would switch from Bell South to Cox Cable if it was going to cost me $100 more per month. No, I am not stupid; even my kids give me more credit than that.
Why have I gone into such detail? Because I don’t think my reality is that different from everyone else. I just took the time to write it all down rather than throw the computer out the window, or throw my cell phone across the room (I do have experience with that), or wring somebody’s neck. I really don’t want to be stuck in jail.
But bringing stuckness back to writing, is it possible to have what is more commonly known as writer’s block? I don’t know about others, but for me at least, I have never experienced it. Any blocks toward writing do not stem from the writing act itself, but from the other parts of living that constrain me from creativity—worry, distraction, or near insanity dealing with issues like the above; the parts of living we long to escape from that consume our time, energy, and resources. Given enough futility, I can be left with a zilch desire to write.