Back Up Your Files Right Now (Or Maybe Don’t)

There is one final piece to my story that explains why my colleague’s words hit so hard that afternoon and I finally took the leap and volunteered as tribute. This one isn’t nearly so fun to write about. The truth is, reader, I made a mistake. A big one.

Do you ever know you should do something, but you keep putting it off, and putting it off, and putting it off?

It was early last summer, and I knew something was wrong with my computer. It was slower than DOS, and sometimes it made awful processing noises, and I’d taken to putting it to sleep instead of shutting it down because it took so long to boot back up. I contemplated buying another one, but it was only about three years old, and that grated on me. I basically used it for writing and online shopping–I thought it should last longer than three years. You know, on principle.

Then one Friday evening, after a long, exhausting week filled with supply chain disasters I was enjoying one of those COVID-era online watch parties with a dear friend and several of her dear friends. Classic Doctor Who, which I know less about then I should. (Though I was about to crave a time machine real bad.) Halfway through the second episode it happened–the infamous blue screen of death.

How Not to Avoid an Accident

Safety was a core value at my former company, and even office employees had to participate in Safe Start training that taught us how to avoid accidents by focusing on our current state. I knew that accidents happened when you were rushing, or fatigued, or frustrated. When your mind wasn’t on task.

But that night I ignored all my training. I wanted to know what was happening to the Doctor, so I needed to get my computer working stat. After everything I endured that week, didn’t I deserve that? Why was this happening to me now?

I don’t remember the exact choices I made, but my computer wouldn’t boot up, and wouldn’t boot up, and wouldn’t boot up, and then there was some menu about factory restoration. And it said I’d have a chance to back up my files and it implied there’d be at least another confirmation screen so I could change my mind. But there was something in my gut that said this was a bad idea. That I should cool off. Walk away.

But I was missing the Doctor and his adventures.

I ignored all my instincts.

I hit okay.

There was no final confirmation screen.

I never got back into the watch party. And my week got a whole lot worse.

Turned out I’d just erased all my documents. Including my novel.

Owning Your Mistakes

Did your stomach just drop? Because mine did. Cue a perpetual, months long stomachache. It was 10 o’clock at night and I was suddenly wide awake and panicking as my computer took forever to reformat itself. All the while I told myself I was just overreacting, because all my documents were backed up on OneDrive. It was going to be fine.

My documents were not backed up on OneDrive.

It was not fine.

I’d always been led to believe that it’s nearly impossible to truly delete something digital. If I’d had dirty photos or incriminating emails on that computer I could smash the hard drive with a baseball bat and light it on fire and somehow those files would still survive to haunt me.

Turns out it’s actually pretty darn easy to permanently destroy files that you desperate want to exist.

If you have any files that you care about–photos, documents, videos, work projects–stop whatever you’re doing and make sure you’ve backed them up. OneDrive is not infallible if you only think you’re saving your files there. Are they really there? Check now. If you’re working on the Great American Novel, email it to yourself. Now. Save it on a flash drive.

(I know, I know, I learned at work those were evil too. Clearly I was not absorbing all these lessons. Don’t save your sensitive work documents to a flash drive. You might drop it on the ground in public and then–espionage. But if your important files are personal, knock yourself out. But don’t pick up a random flash drive from the ground and plug it into you computer. Because–viruses.)

I made a mistake. I knew that, even in those terrible moments when I still hoped everything might not be lost but knew on some instinctual level that they were. As much as I wanted to rage at the computer company that made such a subpar machine, I knew this was like 97% on me. I had ignored all the warning signs that my computer was going to fail on me. Even though I’d lost all my photos from my trip to England a few years earlier because my phone wasn’t backed up and I managed to drive away with it on top of my car so it was crushed beyond repair, I had apparently learned nothing. I had never taken two minutes to insure that my life’s work was backed up.

Whether you accept the challenge to rewrite your life or not, you’re going to make mistakes.

Sometimes those mistakes turn out to be for the best.

Lessons From Loss

I went to several professionals, and they all told me the same thing — thanks to a lovely “feature” called BitLocker that’s supposed to make it impossible for others to steal your data, it was now impossible for me to recover my data.

I was devastated. I had a previous system backup from January 2018 that included most of the books I’d ever written, and I’d sent my current work in progress to a critique partner in April 2020. But everything else I’d written in the past three and a half years was gone. That included 50,000 words of my villain’s origin story I’d written for NaNoWriMo 2019.

Even worse, it included all the major rewrites I’d done on Phoenix Falling for the first year of the pandemic. Although 2020 had started with a few paralyzing months of existential dread wondering what the heck is going on, I’d eventually embraced the free time that came with the government recommending you have no plans and not leave your house and made significant progress on my novel.

All. Gone.

The day after the deletion debacle I went to see my mother and just laid on her bed, basically inconsolable. I felt like I’d run over a beloved pet. I had just killed my dream. I had been working on this book for so long. And I had finally made significant progress, but only because I literally never left my apartments for months except to wander around the park next door.

By summer 2021 we were somewhat pretending life was normal again. I knew it would take me more than a year to recreate everything I’d lost now that I had some plans, and I was still only halfway through the necessary revisions. I couldn’t fathom starting over. The book was never going to be finished.

I seriously considered never touching Phoenix Falling again. Tried to imagine what it would be like to abandon the world that had consumed my thoughts for 17 years.

I was going to waste my life.

Those were some dark days. But they taught me something with undeniable clarity. Writing mattered. This was not just a fun little hobby for me. It was essential to my very identity. I didn’t know who I’d be without it.

But I’ll admit this to you: I expected I was going to find out.

The Advice No One Wants to Hear

I won’t go into all the details, but there was actually a stretch of summer months where my computer was sent away and I was waiting for a miracle I didn’t believe in. I’d pretty much accepted that the book was gone, but there was the tiniest sliver of hope that some data recovery experts in the Midwest could find a few of my files since I’d given them several very specific keywords relating to obscure character names and imaginary places.

During that time, my neighbor threw herself a birthday party. While I really just wanted to mope around I didn’t have a proper excuse not to go. At the party, I explained my crisis to the brother of a friend, who I’d never met before. And you know what he said to me?

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Ugg. I’m convinced that nearly everyone who says that means to be helpful. I even believe it, from a theological standpoint. This guy had great intentions. He was trying to be comforting and optimistic. But I didn’t want to be comforted or cheered in that moment. I wanted to complain about the injustice that had happened to me. I wanted to whine and mope and stew in my misery, and I wanted everyone around me to affirm how much this sucked.

Real mature, right?

The loss was still too raw. I didn’t want his calm, observatory encouragement. Who was this guy and what did he know?

As an aside, the next time someone you know is faced with a loss or a crisis, and the words threatening to spew out are, “Everything happens for a reason,” I encourage you to swallow them down. Even if you believe them. Even if you think they believe them. They might, when they’re in their right mind. But if they’re not in their right mind right then, the dismissal of their current pain for a future gain they can’t begin to contemplate is unlikely to make them feel any better.

There may be a time for that. But it’s probably not yet.

Because here’s the thing. I didn’t believe there was a reason I deleted my manuscript when someone suggested that at my neighbor’s birthday party. But when my colleague said “I wish I could volunteer as tribute” a few months later I didn’t just think about how my current path felt like wasting my life. I was reminded of how much writing meant to me. And it wasn’t just Richard Wilbur poems and pixilated stories about unicorns. It was the agony I still felt about deleting so much of my work.

In that moment I realized that everything I lost could be recreated. What I needed was time and focus. It might take years if I tried to do it while working full time but it wasn’t impossible if I removed that job from the equation.

If my computer had never crashed, I may never have been brave enough to make that choice. If I wasn’t desperate, I probably wouldn’t have even considered the possibility. I’d have had the book, but I wouldn’t have had the time to finish it.

That day in my office, after I hung up the phone and contemplated the major life revision I was already pretty dead-set on, I realized something I hadn’t been willing to accept just a few months earlier.

My friend’s brother was right.

Life is a Matter of Perspective

So while I do think you should back up all your important documents right now, especially if you’re a writer, there’s a part of me that believes that maybe you shouldn’t.

I lost some darn good writing–about 200 pages of substantial revisions. And while I told myself that after I cleared all the manufacturing drama out of my head I would probably remember at least the gist of what I’d deleted here’s the brutal truth–I really didn’t. That work was gone. Having now rewritten all that was lost I’m pleased with where my manuscript currently stands, but I accept that there were glimmers of brilliance lost forever to one exhaustion fueled mistake. Sometimes sacrifices are required. Some lost things are never found.

But I would sacrifice 400 pages for the life I’ve created for myself in the meanwhile. This lovely life with less stress and more inspiration, where I get to tell stories all day and read more books and also encourage you to live the life that you want, just like I’m living the life that I want.

In the moment crashing my computer was one of the worst things that could have happened to me, but one year later I know it was one of the best. The only thing that changed was my perspective.

It’s fine–and probably healthy–to grieve and mourn and rage a bit when bad things happen. But it isn’t healthy to stay in that whirlwind. There are lessons to be learned from our failure, but we have to be willing to look for them. I might have chosen to give up, abandon my novel, and hate that particular computer manufacturer for the rest of my days. Instead I chose to accept the loss and look for the blessings it spurred.

I am certainly much happier than that day I couldn’t get off my parents’ bed.

It’s hard to flip that switch from pessimism to optimism. Sometimes circumstances just suck, and there are tragedies where anyone would be hard pressed to find a silver lining.

But literature is filled with heroes who rise from mistakes and failure and loss, who learn and grow and perservere.

That’s the kind of story I want to tell. In my books, and in my life.

Don’t Let Your Mistakes Hold You Back

If you choose to make a change and rewrite your life, you’re going to make mistakes.

If you stay exactly where you are, you’re going to make mistakes.

Mistakes are inevitable.

How you respond to them is not. You don’t have to let them define you or deter you.

Mistakes can remind us what’s really important, or show us something we didn’t realize about ourselves. They teach us what not to do. Sometimes they tell us we need to slow down, sleep more, keep our eyes and mind on our task.

It’s okay to make mistakes because you tried something new. And it’s okay to make mistakes because you’ve forgotten that sleep is important and you just want to know if the Doctor saved the day. (I didn’t see it, but I’m sure he did.)

If you tried something bold before, and it didn’t work, maybe it’s time to try again. Maybe there was a lesson there still waiting to be discovered.

If you’re anything like me, your biggest mistake might just be the catalyst you need to launch you into your greatest adventure.