It all started yesterday with another glorious sunset. I grabbed my camera and snapped off some shots as it fell into the harbour. It was an image that I have collected in my mind's eyes, but had yet to capture it in real time. I smiled as it dropped from my sight, then climbed on the back of an ATV vehicle, and wound through an interwoven collection of trails complete with roots on the path. I was bounced around this way and that, loving the speed and the brisk Newfoundland wind in my face. The driver, a young sixteen year-old Newfoundland kid, born and being raised.
Feeling the temperature falling lower and lower, I remembered there was a toasty woodstove warming up at the house I was staying in. After clambering off the four-wheeler and walking the short distance back to the house, I decided to do some writing on my book.
And thus began the beginning of the night I was to lose six years of my life. Here you go, and may you enjoy.
I walked into my room, and placed my laptop on the small sidestand next to the bed. It seemed a mite rickety, but all in all, I figured it would hold. I booted up the power, and cleaned up the room until it was ready for me to write some more words.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the table shudder under the weight, and turned to watch as the laptop slipped off...and fell to the ground with a crash. My first thought as I watched it slide off was if my removable hard drive disk was tucked away in its box for safekeeping...or still in its port on the back panel.
With a small shock of dismay, I remembered it was indeed still plugged into the back of my now upturned portable computer just as it made contact with a sickening crunch. Then it sunk in that I had no other recent backups of what I have been writing for the last six years. I went over, picked it up, and observed the disk. It was bent at an obscene angle, but yet was still in place.
It was when I pulled it out that I saw the motherboard was pushed up out of its shell, and two hairline fractures ran down the side of its plastic casing.
Gone. 100, 000 words, 108 computer pages, 22 chapters, and six years of my blood sweat and tears. Six years of writing all gone. I racked my brain as I catalogued disks I may have saved a hard copy on, or maybe I could salvage what I had on hard drive at school. Either way, I knew I had at least lost the last 14 chapters I had written in the last six months alone.
I am in a place on the west coast of Newfoundland, and it is a hell of a distance away from any source of city or anywhere I could take to have it looked at. Instead of a really nice laptop, I figured I may now have a really expensive piece of useless plastic.
Gone.
I fell asleep around 3 in the morning, after spending most of the time before tossing and turning. Working things out in my head as to what I must do next, and when I would at least start to pick up the longhand version where I left off. Ironically enough, it was at the end of the most recent chapter I was working on. It was a start. More so, a little voice told me that I was not allowed to be upset or distraught...I could always start again.
Today, the woman I am boarding off of, recommended a friend of hers who knew about computers, and after work I went to see him; removable hard disk in one hand, and the laptop in the other. What was there to lose, right? The strange thing was that I was surprisingly calm because I see these accessories for what they are: possessions. I might have a long road ahead of me with all the backtracking and such, but in the end I still had my memory, and well, it is my life I am writing about so I think I remember how the story goes.
Then sat in amazment as he plugged in the disk into his laptop, and it brought up all the history I thought I had lost. And then we took out the battery, put it back in, and I watched as my laptop came to life. Turns out those little drives are tough little suckers, and it cushioned the impact of the fall and saved the day in the end. I am now saving to a rewritable CD and will make sure to make backup copies in triplicate.
The little disk that could. Just like the story it is holding in its palm. And back to the craft I go. Until we meet again, people, until we meet again.
"A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong." - Orson Welles
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