I had a meltdown tonight.
The quickest way to knowing for certain if something matters to you might be to take it away. See how you fare. For example, take away my car – I don’t really care. Take away my cell phone – I’m mildly annoyed. Take away my running shoes – now I’m pissed off. Take away someone I love – don’t even get me started on this one. And as it turns out, don’t take away my writing.
Which is precisely what Google Docs did at around 8:45pm tonight, Thursday night at the cottage. For whatever reason, everything A and I had been working on “offline” on my iPad disappeared when the device got connected to the internet. Now it was for a kickass reason that we logged on early (I’ll tell you later), but the irony has not gone unnoticed that the first thing to go “wrong” on this trip was right when I engaged in technological connection. Supposedly, unbeknownst to us, every document we created while offline needed a “save to device” button clicked. They’ve got a popup window for everything imaginable at Apple, but letting you know that your work isn’t actually being saved is lost upon them. And thus lost upon me. Three posts of thought, contribution, and creativity gone. A long, detailed document of A’s gone. I’d love to say that I took a deep breath when I realized that the pieces had been wiped away, but that would be a lie.
I started bawling. I covered my face. I plunked down on the bed, dramatically kicking my legs in the air. I threw the iPad (at the bed, but still) and I said I was never, ever going to write again.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have a flair for the dramatic.
And bless her heart, A’s face oozed sympathy and compassion. She hugged me and lamented the lost posts with me. A didn’t need my meltdown at it being taken away to know that my writing matters to me – she already knew that. But I suppose I did need that. It felt painful to have the pieces gone, like when your searching for your camera to catch a fleeting shot but don’t get to it in time. Something is lost that you can’t simply recreate.
But alas, good fortune wasn’t too far behind this mis one. Right in line with our enjoyment of the spoken word is the fact that after each post I wrote this week, I read them aloud to A, sometimes more than once. And so then, bless her entire being this time, A sat down and wrote everything that she remembered from my work. Together we crafted outlines for all three pieces. Tomorrow I’m going to attempt to recreate them.
I now know how much my writing means to me. I’ll have to focus on giving it more time and attention from now on. And as a bonus tonight, I also know A always listens to me when I read to her. Though I plan to be more vigilant moving forward, at least I can count on her to bring back what I might lose.
(*So now you know that the three previous posts had to be rewritten! I really feel like they were a whole lot better the first time around, but I did my best.)
xo shades
otherwise healthy 