Lessons

When I first saw the apple and the little “roundy round thingy” (which I was told later was a timer) I was not particularly alarmed, however after forcing the thing off and booting it up, forcing it off and booting it off a couple more times, I became panicked.  Trying to stay calm I looked up the number for support, dialed, punched in numbers, selected options until I finally got a living person to help me.  That person was gracious but of no real assistance other than to prepare me for the worst and tell met that I had to take my beloved computer to the Apple store for a visit to the Genius Bar.  

My initial reaction was darn, I can’t get on the internet now, but it did not take long to begin to consider all I stood to loose if the hard drive was not recoverable.  I had backed up my data prior to going to Paris.  What writing would be on my external hard drive?  I had been prolific in Paris and I knew that would be all gone.  Thank God that I had not done any real work on my book.  Something I had been nearly embarrassed over.  All the writing I did for the blog, the new blog and some from last semester would be gone.  There was no way to know, so I busied myself feeling nauseated over it.  And then there were the photos, most I still had on the memory card.  The first day or so, however, I had hit that convenient option to delete the photos on the card, that was before I thought it through.  The first two days worth of photographs were potentially gone too.  The day I went to St. Denis, gone as well.  I felt rather numb, like a cut the first few seconds after the incision, then my heart began to throb.

My mind raced then to the recipes, the ones from class, the ones Pino, my instructor sent me for a birthday present, the ones I had researched for Macarons, the ones I had gleaned from other sources!  Also all gone. Now I felt a sinking feeling, the one one gets when there is no hope.

Oh, and my homework from class, the journaling that I had drug to WWFAC and forced my poor writing buddies to endure.  This too was gone.  I was panicked, as if I had done something wrong or I was given news that I had a serious illness.  All this over a computer, that, I had failed to back up.. Data, bits of magnetic informations, that was precious to me, images, thoughts, ideas. All gone.

Jodi was particularly helpful, “ did you have it backed up?  I gave you that extra hard drive, where was it.  I  would have thought you would have learned you lesson after locking up your thumb-drive”. Fat lot of consolation I was going to get there.

I left work early the next day to take her, yes her, to the Apple store where a very nice person named Molly tried valiantly to resuscitate her, to no avail.  She gave me the look I have seen colleagues give patients when they had to be told that they had a fracture or were going to need surgery.  That look of, “this is going to be painful, but I have to do it to fix you”.  How many times have I delivered that message and accompanying look myself?  Molly said that she was gong to have to erase my hard drive to restore the computer at all.  Gone with one keystroke, Memories, writing and food yet to be, music I would long to hear, applications I use.  Pieces of my own creativity that I took for granted, that I did not cherish to back up with regularity,  All gone.