The Best Laid Plans, Failed: NaBloPoMo
Following in suit of Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea, which delighted at the opportunity to show off some fresh food flair, The Seven Dales of Vale digest is also going to partake in National Blog Posting Month with a slight modification - instead of daily posts as is done traditionally, we shall do weekly posts instead. As always, comments are welcome and encouragement greatly appreciated!
Being caught up in vigorous pattern of making effective and frequent backups (which is trying at the best of times) is no longer enough in the Digital Millenium. During the final days leading up to my end of high school examinations, I lost copies of notes four-times over where the digital copy evaded me, leaving only its personal effects and the physical copies lost in that myriad of tattered white bulk upon my table. Earlier this morning, Ubuntu 8.10 decided that it didn’t like my graphics card drivers and so decided that it would no longer load the user interface. Earlier this week, at work, a major system malfunction meant the loss of thousands of vital files at University grade, irreversibly murdered in a catastrophe of disconnected power and failure to follow “procedure”. If it were not sitting on my desk with swirls of steaming evaporation rising from it and a pleasing scent to its proximity, I would also readily pledge my tea bag to have gone Away Without Offical Leave (AWOL) and while in unannounced absence, probably in that void of space with my missing left socks, keys to old residences and possibly even my sanity in its many pieces.
Strangely, although we might loose the most vital things to our everyday life, we never seem to loose things that we absolutely despise (which, in my case, would be my bank statements, overdue fees and left-overs in the fridge) even given our propensity to push them from our memory. So, amidst the chaos of loss, be it digital or otherwise, the question bellows loud and clear: how do you deal with loss when even the best laid plans have failed?
I daresay that loosing things isn’t too bad for the most part: when Windows XP decided to heave it last breath on my desktop and perish into the abyssal waves of binary and electromagnetic currents, I decided turning over a new leaf was the way to go. The older we become, the more of a tendency we have to hoard things - material and incorporeal - and Windows (or any operating system for that matter) is no exception to this rule. Formatting was cathartic, delightfully relieving to the command prompt commands typed with absolute assurance. So what exactly is it like being on the other side of the leaf just turned, without a thought of regret to those best laid plans now in the dust?
Where Windows is concerned, starting again was deeply satisfying. Of course, important documents and other files are sufficiently backed up in backups of backups (in an infinity of contingencies) until liability is waivered. Thankfully for the digital side of things, starting over is a simple point-and-click excercise. The real world is, alas, is not so simple.
There’s something to be said about person who is completely prepared for every situation (sound a bit like the The Unexpected Traveller?) and has not reserved a space in their psyche for those tidbits of unpredicability that make life a bit more spicy than its usual pace of humdrum. We are all guilty in some respects of trying to be as prepared as possible for certain conditions of life, inevitable or otherwise - that only the best outcomes can be made of them. Who doesn’t practise speaking in front a mirror before heading out for a job interview or groom excessively before a date? Sometimes, by holding in our minds the outcome we truly expect, it truly occurs. Let me speak of this in a more simple way: the next time you predict yourself being nervous before public speaking, I can assure you that will be shaking in your boots before you reach the stage.
‘Starting again’ has an amazing and unique quality about it that inspires you to repeat what you did earlier, replicating previous efforts in the hope of having to exert less effort this time around. More often than not, we find oursevles producing a better quality product the second time around. This reminds me a fellow I met some time ago in an English lecture, who swore that his computer was a demon and not to be trusted. To that end, he allowed his word processing applications to garble his text, so that he was ready to begin on a blank slate, revising those ideas he had once seemed praiseworthy, but after a heavy-duty working, seemed worn and rushed.
This is not to say that backups are unimportant and that losses are not really losses - nothing can distract from the sting of feeling “unprepared when one could have potentially done something to prevent the situation from escalating as it did”. Rather, in the shadow of loss, we are already imbued with the coping mechanisms to see us pulled forward into the next chapter of the problem. In truth, the other side of the leaf is really only as green as you percieve it to be, and replanting the uprooted roots of your ideals are as difficult as you make them.
So, a little change in perspective can go a long way? Perhaps. So long as we aren’t foolhardy enough to believe that a change in perspective can ever make root canal any more a pleasant experience, then this strategy can be highly effective in the long run, after all.
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