Oh hey, what’s this button do …

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I’ve spent the last several months moping about what could have been and consequently have taken my eyes off  the essence of what is me – the writing.

I’m absolutely sick about that.

Last weekend when I stared down the black hole that was my writing career when my laptop decided to take a dirt nap, taking essentially 15 years of words and photos with it, I panicked.  I hadn’t cared much about putting words to paper, much less pixels since the end of May, and what had been submitted and accepted was token when compared to any number of months in previous years. I’d opted out of NaNoWriMo with a finality that surprised even me and cared not a whit about KickOff or logging or shared frenetic wordplay in semi-lit bars and coffee shops, and yet when November 2 rolled around and my Sakakibara (if you know how I name my devices, that name will make perfect sense to you) settled comfortably in a cycle of reboot-cheery green screen announcement that it needed to reboot, I faced the very real possibility that the sum of my writing was forever lost. That alternate future is bleak, boys and girls.

I know in theory I strongly advocate backups, clouds and the redundant printing of everything forever, but I’d actually neglected to back up anything in the last year, despite having several multi-gig SD cards, a DVR-drive, and a 1T external drive that holds nothing but obsolete music files and pictures long since uploaded to Flickr. I was regretting this staggering lack of foresight as the nice men at MicroCenter tried to calm a near-hysteric me. Long story that doesn’t need rehashing to anyone but a priest,  all of my information was safely backed up, Sakakibara is back home, and here I sit pondering what to do next.

This was like a near death experience for wordsmiths, one I’d not like to repeat again, and as I reinstall 107GB worth of  my life, I’m finding abandoned stories, forgotten snips. I don’t mind telling you, I feel just a little worse about my situation. I also don’t mind telling you that I feel like a fraud and I hate that, too. It’s a yucky little Shame Spiral and I’m hopping off this ride before I puke my cotton candy.

I’m not going to stand here and proclaim I’m going to rededicate the last 7 weeks of 2013 to writing and submitting, because only a fool lets her mouth write checks her butts can’t cash.  I can, however, say that every day it gets a little better and I hope to get back into a regular groove again.

Not just because I’d like to finish *something* long form this year, but because there are too many undressed babies in to many folders that need to get dressed and into loving homes.

This post was brought to you by Kraken Black Spiced Rum and not a wee bit of guilt.