I have been a dedicated Mac girl for 30 years. I have only ever owned mac computers. I have never had a single virus or ever lost one byte of data due to computer malfunction. Oh, I have heard my friends talk about all their many PC woes and I have laughed to myself for being wise and being Mac. Until today.
I have been using a Powerbook laptop for the last 6-7 years. I invested in one when I began at WWfaC as incentive to write more. I guess it worked because I certainly became more productive. I started to think about replacing it right as I lost my job so I postponed getting a new one.
Lately I have taken to writing sitting on the couch and just plugging into the wall instead of into the surge protector. Even knowing that the Wonderbread powergrid is about as faithful as your average street walker and prone to surges and outages. I have been doing this for months....probably since the new couch arrived. Or since I started coming home from work too wiped out to move.
I came home yesterday to find my laptop locked up. When I tried to restart it nothing but white screen and a file folder with a question mark on it. I had certainly never seen that before. Ruh-roh Raggy. Re-booting. Same thing. My little Mac was toast.
Fast forward one day. New computer. Repaired laptop. The new computer is beautiful and it offsets the kinda angsty feeling I have about what it seems I lost in the meltdown. I feel a little queasy when I think about it. But I'm not angry or mopey. I made my choice to never back it up. I made the choice to bypass the surge protector.
6-7 years worth of photos of England, my nieces and nephews, letterboxing trips, and who knows what else. Lots of writing. Too much to even think about. Most painfully about 10 chapters of a book I was working on while I was unemployed. Yes, there are some hard copies of about half of that, but not enough to capture the rest. Sigh.....the Universe is a harsh critic indeed.
But......like every other part of my life when something like this happens, I tell myself that I am making room for something waaaaay better. Better writing. New and different family photos.
Course only a fool would leave that to chance twice.....so now I have back up.
My condolences on the lost work and photos. But you are right, even better words and pictures will fill this one.
ReplyDeleteI have been surprisingly calm about it. Hoping that mojo continues.
ReplyDeleteOh, ouch! I feel your pain. I had a scare like that but fortunately my data was retrievable. Now I'm fanatical abbout backing up, especially my writing - it all goes on a heart-shaped USB key which is backed up onto a DVD periodically.
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