Starting Over

My laptop is off to the hospital, or should I say hospice... it looks like it's the hard drive after all, but if not that, then the mother board. We have great friends who are willing to tinker with it and see if they can save it, but if it's not the hard drive then we will probably ditch the whole thing rather than buy a new mother board, since we'll also need memory because the dear old thing was running pretty pokily. So if that's what we need to do, we'll just go all in and buy a new one.

I'm remembering things that were on there, and am disappointed to not have access to them: my handy calendar that tracks my bill-paying, my itunes library, my photos, my stickies, some grad school papers... but then again there's a certain attraction to just letting it all go.

When I was in college I took copious notes and really loved my notebooks- all the doodles I did in there, all the journal entries I wrote during class... I thought I was creating a real jewel of a time capsule, one that I would pore over in my golden years, share with my children and whatnot.

But after my 8th or 9th move as an adult, I trashed the lot of them. It was a bold move and I still get a pang when I think about it... I should have gone through them, who knows what was in there? But overall I think it was an okay decision and I haven't hurt badly from the loss of them in my basement.

The last time my computer crashed, or I switched email accounts or whatever, all my old emails were gone in an instant, before I even had time to decide if there was anything worth saving in there. And I've been fine.

On the other hand, in my office an old file cabinet holds all my original Youth Ministry files, full of good stuff that I never even look at anymore. But the other day I pulled out program planning forms from 1986, copies of copies of ones that I got at my own CLI in Maine. Gosh darn it if those weren't amazingly helpful! How brilliant to go back to the basics, use a pen and the process again after so long of thinking I didn't need such crutches. I'm glad I kept them.

But I'm okay with letting the old stuff on my old computer go- I can rebuild what I need and find all the bookmarks that I loved, probably, and if I can't, well... I probably didn't love them enough. On to the next blank slate.