CRASH!

I hate excuses. I’ve railed about excuses here, and in particular, the “my dog ate it” of the 21st century:

My hard drive crashed.

But about a week and a half ago, my hard drive crashed–and panic set in then a scramble to recover the last month’s worth of work, and then a trip to bring it in for repair, and still here I sit, waiting for it to be fixed, with tomorrow the eighth business day of their projected eight to ten business days.

So it could have been worse. I will not have suffered significant data loss, and I can still work, kinda.

As it stands I’m cobbling my life together using four devices: my ancient PowerBook, which can access an older version of Office so I can still edit and write but that can’t access the internet; my son’s old Windows laptop, which I’m using right now to type directly into WordPress, which I never do, but it can access the internet but doesn’t have Word and it’s really wonky in lots of ways; my iPhone, which is now my primary email portal, but I have to tell it to go look for new emails, so that’s slowed my response time to a crawl; and an Android tablet that I can use for quicker internet access on the fly and can answer some emails with a bigger so easier to use keyboard.

So edits continue. I’m able to keep up with my online courses, and when I do get my primary computer back I can rebuild it without having lost a month’s work, but still. It’s weird how dependent I’ve become on that work station and disturbing how difficult it’s been for me to roll with this.

This post, for instance, should have been another NaNoWriMo update, but here I am just kinda ranting on the fly. This knocked me back a week, sort of, but in the end, or more accurately right now, I have to walk that off and get back to work, including writing, which I’ve found I can do just as well with a pen and a notebook.

So, I guess, wish me luck that the repair will be done soon and will be affordable, and I’ll be back to writing and editing and living my normal, iMac-centered life soon.

It can’t be too soon!

 

–Philip Athans