Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Lost in re-installation

It’s happened before but not since I've been writing fulltime.

For months now my husband had been saying that I need to clean up my computer, and upgrade it. Did I listen? Sure I listened. Did I do anything about it? Well, talk about procrastinating and I'm the director, CEO and president all rolled into one.

The result - it's all gone.

Happy like pappy, I kept loading up my thumb drive with my work. But I did not also install my files on a CD or shared folder as added security. After all, the thumb drive was working just fine. I could see all my stuff was stored there.

On Sunday 30th, I shut off the voice of procrastination and told my husband to go ahead and upgrade to Windows XP and install Microsoft office 2007.

When the process was over, and I slipped in the thumb drive - nada, nothing, zilch. It was empty. My files, my writing, my research, clips, list of contacts, works in progress and portfolios were gone, all gone - lost in re installation.

I didn't cry. But I swear I wanted to bawl my hear out.

The first two days, the guilt of not double checking my thumb drive to ensure my work was really there before giving the word to upgrade threatened to overwhelm me. I felt emotionally and physically weak. In a second by one fell swoop of the hand, one light click of the computer mouse, just like that, years of work had vanished.

A few times today I thought that I’d ease the situation by extracting some info from a file only to realized that I have nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. I guess it will take a while for me to feel the true extent of what I’ve lost.

I feel so lost that I walk around the house in a daze not knowing quite where to start or re-start. But writer that I am at heart, I write. I know that I can write my way back into a routine that will propel me into the kinds of actions that will see me re-building from my own personal "ground zero."

With prayer, positive self- talk, affirmations and the passion that have brought me this far, I will rebuild my files one by one. Though disappointed, I refuse to sit in the seat of despondency, regret and fear.

Oh yes, this writer is writing her way back and she’s doing it with a vengeance.

1 comment:

Sita said...

Hey...all may not be lost..check with a tech wiz pro...if u had saved anything in the thumb drive..it must be retrievable somehow...

 
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