My computer crashed the other day. I thought that only happened to hapless students, but it turns out I was wrong. And everything was gone. Wiped clean as a blackboard on Friday afternoon. As an analog TV without a converter. Tabla rasa. Two-thirds of a brilliant novel I had just about finished; photos of Hillary and me yukking it up over a beer; Grandma's prize-winning recipes; records of my secret bank account; and a PowerPoint outlining how to cure global warming.
In a word: ______ .
Even if I put it more realistically--that I lost a substantial chunk of a third-rate novel I've been messing with for a long time (and especially this summer), photos of vacations and of Cosmo on Halloween, and a geology glossary that I've been adding to for several years--it's still a bummer. (Does anyone still say that? I'll have to ask my students.)
My first reaction was fatalistic: I guess I wasn't meant to write that novel after all. The second was more mercenary: I lost a good ten hours' worth of work translating geology documents from French, which I will have to redo, without pay. And third: Crap.
I'm not crying, but I could be.
Yahoo bookmarks, favorite apps, preferred wallpaper. Software for Office, the printer, and DSL all has to be re-installed--not a big deal, but time-consuming. (Ten hours of translating! And 60 student papers to grade! A drafty house to winterize!)
MP3 downloads.
Not a catastrophe. Not even a calamity. More of a bother, a nuisance, an inconvenience. (See, I got my thesaurus back!) In any case, at least there's always more music out there. (And Pandora's back on my favorites bar!)
Yours in cyber-ness,
