Not two hours after I write the previous blog yammering away about how moving through obstacles makes me live in fearlessness, my hard drive crashed...and I only had my book backed up. Five years of writing, photos, e-mails...everything appeared to be gone. Numerous attempts to boot off a CD were a waste of time.
For five days, I grieved the loss of my writings. Someday I'd get back to all those thoughts and ideas and re-examine, flush out, and use for magazine articles or another book. Now, they day looked like it would never come. But...every cloud has a silver lining, right? So what's the positive? What's the benefit of possibly losing four years of correspondences with friend Victoria who is a fan of the band, or the photos of my daughter when she lost her first tooth, or all those incredible insights I had to delete from the current book, and hoped to discuss in my next manuscript? How can this be a good thing?
Rather like feng-shui, when we clear out the clutter, the stuff from our past, we make room for something new in our lives. Perhaps this is a sign from the Universe that new and improved ideas will come along. The correspondences from the past are just that...the past. Like ghosts that haunt, ideas stem from our imagination. And that, I've got plenty of. So, no worries about lack of material. It seems to come in a never ending stream, and all I have to do is dip my oar in to access the eternal flow of life's insights, mysteries and Aha's!
After mourning for the ideas that would never be, I surrendered and let go of the past. And the phone rang. My data was retrieved by placing the hard drive in a non-bootable dirve, and was now safe and secure. But I wasn't elated. I'd become comfortable with starting over again. Like a person who loses everything in a flood or fire, we pick up the pieces and move on. And moving on is what I need to do, whether or not my data still exists.
So, I'm moving on with my book...with writing magazine and newspaper articles, and with a new attitude. When life gives you lemons, don't just make lemonade, make lemon drop cookies, lemon meringue pie, lemon sponge cake and lemon chicken. Before you know it, you'll have an entire meal to savor. And so it goes.
For five days, I grieved the loss of my writings. Someday I'd get back to all those thoughts and ideas and re-examine, flush out, and use for magazine articles or another book. Now, they day looked like it would never come. But...every cloud has a silver lining, right? So what's the positive? What's the benefit of possibly losing four years of correspondences with friend Victoria who is a fan of the band, or the photos of my daughter when she lost her first tooth, or all those incredible insights I had to delete from the current book, and hoped to discuss in my next manuscript? How can this be a good thing?
Rather like feng-shui, when we clear out the clutter, the stuff from our past, we make room for something new in our lives. Perhaps this is a sign from the Universe that new and improved ideas will come along. The correspondences from the past are just that...the past. Like ghosts that haunt, ideas stem from our imagination. And that, I've got plenty of. So, no worries about lack of material. It seems to come in a never ending stream, and all I have to do is dip my oar in to access the eternal flow of life's insights, mysteries and Aha's!
After mourning for the ideas that would never be, I surrendered and let go of the past. And the phone rang. My data was retrieved by placing the hard drive in a non-bootable dirve, and was now safe and secure. But I wasn't elated. I'd become comfortable with starting over again. Like a person who loses everything in a flood or fire, we pick up the pieces and move on. And moving on is what I need to do, whether or not my data still exists.
So, I'm moving on with my book...with writing magazine and newspaper articles, and with a new attitude. When life gives you lemons, don't just make lemonade, make lemon drop cookies, lemon meringue pie, lemon sponge cake and lemon chicken. Before you know it, you'll have an entire meal to savor. And so it goes.