Tidbit Insightings, the Computer Crash Edition

Why should I go into details, we have nothing that is not perishable except what our hearts and our intellects endows us with.
Ovid

So my hard drive called it quits on Saturday. My darling tech-savvy fiancé did everything he could, but unfortunately the data is apparently beyond restoration, at least in any DIY manner. My last incomplete backup was from October. Let’s just say there was a lot of data I’ll probably never get back.

Bummer.

But not in vain, I hope. After finding, buying, installing and formatting a new hard drive, and after five hours of installing, I actually have a functioning, albeit quite empty, computer at my disposal again. And all during the weekend, I kept having these little *ding* *ding* insightings that relate to this whole crash. At least I’m learning.

Way to ignore your intuition, bonehead!

This is what my intuition kept yelling at me all through Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t get offended, because it was right, of course.

I’d just switched computers two or three days earlier, transfering all my data from one hard drive to another by cable. There were at least three separate occasions when I remember thinking to myself, “I should really do a backup one of these days,” and following up with “Nah, I’ll get to it tomorrow.”

Before this, I hadn’t given a second thought to backing up my files for months – as is probably evident  from the fact that the last backup was ancient.

Remembering this made me even more intent on listening to my gut feelings, and possibly even making physical notes about things I have to do. You know, in addition to the mental ones I kept making and then forgetting.

Priorities

When my computer stopped responding, I called out to my fiancé to come and help me. He did a bit of online research, asked me a few questions about what I had been doing the moment the computer started beachballing me (browsing a discussion forum, in fact – nothing extremely demanding), and then said “I’m afraid I might have bad news.”

Me, jokingly: “What, like, all my files are gone or something?”

Fiancé: “Yeah, it looks like that’s the case.”

Me: “Oh.”

And then I waited for the huge emotional reaction. You know, of rage, of disappointment, of grief.

And waited.

And waited.

And it never came.

Fiancé: “I feel really bad for you.”

Me: “I do too, I guess.”

Even when I started to go over all the stuff I had on my hard drive that hadn’t been saved – my schoolwork from the past four months save for a few files I’d worked on at the uni, my music, my photos, my wedding planning files, my e-books and mp3-audiobooks – I still didn’t get the panic reaction. I still haven’t, and it’s been two days.

Two possible reasons for this:

One, I’m still in shock, and will break down crying two months from now.

Two, and the one I consider more probable, I know I’m going to live.

Of course I’m annoyed at myself for not backing up my work. Since there’s no-one else to blame, though, I chose to not reprimand myself over and over again for this. I’ll just feel worse and it wouldn’t help anyway. The more useful way to cope with this is to consciously start creating a habit of backing up my stuff every day.

What’s even more important is that what I lost was information and effort, nothing more. Sure, information and effort are important, and I would probably be more frazzled if I had lost e.g. a week’s worth of billable work due tomorrow. The most important thing, though, is that no-one died. No-one was injured. No-one had to give up their home or livelihood because of my mistake.

Realizing this made me really happy, since it means I’m moving towards having reactions that are actually congruent with my values. Losing all that information, money and effort doesn’t bother me as much as it could, since those things are not at the top five of my list of values.

Things you can do something about

All this got me thinking about loss and ephemerality. There are some things we lose in life that we can’t really help. Others, like the contents of my hard drive, can be saved with a bit of time and effort before they disappear completely.

Which is why I finally decided to send an email to a friend I’ve been thinking about a lot. All through this fall, I’ve been pondering about whether or not to contact him and tell him that I’d really enjoy it if we could go out for a cup of coffee every now and again.

Before Saturday, something had always stopped me. Maybe the possibility of making a fool of myself in assuming he’d want any contact with me. Maybe the fear of not saying it right and giving out the wrong message. Maybe the assumption that if he wanted to hang out with me, he’d contact me himself.

Now, though, I decided I didn’t want to lose the possibility of a wonderful friendship simply due to the lack of effort. If he never answers me, that’s fine. At least I won’t wonder about it. He now knows I think he’s awesome. What he does with that information is up to him.

If I make a fool of myself in the process, it’s the lesser of two evils – and nothing I haven’t done a zillion times before.

Thank you for stopping by! If you feel like sharing your own insightings in the comments, please do – and until we meet again, keep catching those insightings!

Love,

Sari