It’s been a long time since I’d seen that dreaded Blue Screen of Death. Years of using macs have spared me the horror, and if mac made a netbook maybe I’d have lived blissfully blue screen free for eternity. I’d almost forgotten the sinking, my guys have turned to lead, feeling that appears when you know that this one isn’t going to be fixed by just restarting.
The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) ambushed me last Tuesday as I was packing up my things. I was facing an 21 hour journey to Vancouver, a tech filled weekend at TBEX and then another 9 hours of flying to get home. My Asus eee netbook is less than a year old, but there’s not a whole lot tech support could do for me over in China. There’s never really a good time for your computer to crap out on you, but this was pretty damn inconvenient.
Lucky girl that I am though, my boyfriend is a computer genius, who simultaneously managed to keep me calm, and gently coax my computer into coming back to life. That was the good news! The not so good: the entire C-drive was wiped.
Mentally I took stock:
Music: all safe and sound on my iPod
Pictures: backed up on my external hard drive
Words: not so lucky…
I like to write in Open Office, and I usually work from a range of drafts with start dates running back months. About 25 blogs posts, for this and my other blog, in various states of composition were totally gone. Dissolved. Never to be seen again. Seeing as it takes me 3-5 hours to fully write a blog post, that’s a lot of man hours (and some pretty good ideas) down the drain.
Oh, it is painful. All of those posts, all of those ideas (including my big running list document “Blog Post Ideas”), all of my spreadsheets and other business materials totally wiped out.** It’s not just the work either: I’ve gotten so used to writing down my experiences and fine tuning them with words that it almost feels like certain memories are erased. Even if I manage to re-write some of those ideas the tiny details, and that original spark of inspiration is gone forever.
Always the optimist, I’m trying to look at this from a positive angle. I just spent the last few days in Vancouver at TBEX, where I was fortunate enough to meet all sorts of people doing really cool travel related things. It made me think that I’ve written myself into a bit of a rut these last few months; a bit navel gaze-y. My blog could benefit from some new energy and maybe even a new direction.
So maybe this is one of those horrible blessings in disguise. A late spring cleaning, a tabula rasa for my ideas. Erasing all those old thoughts will hopefully mean room for new inspiration. I want this blog to be better for you guys- I want to keep telling you stories of course, but also to get you the encouragement and information that you need for your own adventures. Because really, it’s not all about me. Thanks universe, for so brutally reminding me of that.
Also, I’m totally getting a mac.
What sort of things would you like to see more of on Twenty-Something Travel?
*Yes, I know I should have backed them up. I know. Trust me, I know.
