A Smack in the Face

     I don't know about you, but I'm the kind of person who learns lessons the hard way. Sometimes things have to smack me in the face before I say "Oh, hello!" (After putting on a dramatic "Ow! What was that for?!?!?")

     You know how I mentioned that the computer wasn't working yesterday? Yeah, well, it crashed. It's done, finito, kaboom, dead. And everything that wasn't backed up on the hard drive is gone. Commence the mourning process. Photos, emails, Word documents... I get that most people don't mourn the loss of Word documents, but you don't understand. I edited a 100+ page story on that machine and never bothered to send it to my email like I had with the original draft. So I have the original draft in its pen and ink form and it its digital form, but the second draft??? Good bye, days of strenuous effort. But the thing is, maybe it's not so bad. I was really upset because I changed the beginning of it, and now I can't remember what I wrote, and I thought "Oh how awful, my hard work... Gone!" But then I thought about this quote from one of the Beatles about songwriting that went something like this: "If we wrote a song and couldn't remember it the next morning, it was rubbish, and we forgot about it." They didn't mourn the loss of their previous ingenuity because obviously it wasn't too genius if they couldn't even remember it. Then I thought about how I can remember exactly how The Fault in Our Stars begins ("Late in the winter of my seventeenth year..."), and how Legend begins ("My mother thinks I'm dead...") and how A Summer to Die begins ("It was Molly who drew the line..."). So if I can't even remember how I changed my own book, even if I thought what I added was good, it must have been rubbish. And I figure, if I changed and fixed things one way once, I'll probably fix them the same way again. And this time I'm going to be ruthless. I'm going to have no fear in tearing that little twerp to shreds. He ain't gonna look anything like he did before I started on him. But on the other hand, I'm still angry and mad at myself for trusting a machine to save my hard work. 

     I went for a run today (yay!) and had a little convo with God. It went a little something like this:

Me: <out of breath> That was really symbolic of you, you know. The whole computer crashing thing on the 30th day of me attempting to abstain from the computer. I guess I kind of needed you to smack me in the face with that. 

God: Yeah, pretty much. 

Me: So basically, I'm pretty mad about losing Draft Two of TAoF. But like, it's probably a good thing. But I'm also mad that I'm going to have to retype all those pages of that other thing. At least I wrote it down. I'm never trusting computers again. And the pictures... Dang. But oh well. I mean, I still have the memories. Although I'm mad about that too. 

God: Mmh hmm. 

Me: Basically I'm an idiot for mourning the loss of a freaking computer when other people mourn the loss of their parents and siblings and grandparents. 

God: Yeah, basically. 

Me: You know what I've realized? Mourning is like 90% guilt and anger and like 10% sadness. Like, if my mom died, I would be super pissed and guilty because I didn't love her enough when she was here. And then after I'd gotten over that, I'd have a little room left over to be like totally, crushingly sad. Why am I experiencing the same thing over Word documents?

God: Cuz you dumb. 

Me: And honestly, I am not going to remember this when I'm old and decrepit and on my death bed. Like, when I die, and you're like, "Remember how upset you were over losing those Word documents and pictures? Yeah, that's a tally on your resume beside "selfish and self-centered"."

God <aside>: I think she might be getting it!

Me: But seriously, if possible, I'd really like those Word documents back. And the pictures too please. Thank you. 

God: I didn't smack her hard enough. 

     You know what I just thought of? Month four (possessions) starts today, which makes this whole computer catastrophe all the more symbolic. Bye bye, computer attachment, bye bye possessions. 

Day 313 Song Recommendation: "Houdini" by Foster the People. 

-SE Wagner 

P.S.

I watched an hour of YouTube today.