So, the consequences of my own action – well, inaction, really – have come back to bite my posterior anatomy pretty hard: I failed to back up my work adequately, so when the hard drive died a malfunctioning death, I lost everything. I mean seriously, everything. My books are gone, drafts as well as completed copies; notes, outlines … and all my pictures. Years of pictures. Now, my tech guy (aka my son) found a place that’s working to recover the data, and he says they probably can (at an impressive cost, which I am more or less happy to pay), but until I actually have everything back, I don’t have anything. Waiting is teaching me a lot about patience. I am an unwilling student, but trying to let the experience change me for the better.
(And yes, yes I have now signed up for a save-my-stuff service, because obviously, I cannot be trusted to back up my own data to an external hard drive. The little bit that was on it was at least two years old, and woefully incomplete. The barn door is securely shut and locked now, though.)
As some readers will know, I am a Wiccan, which means, among other things, that I use magic to augment my luck/success in the world, though not in matters which can be “controlled” by mundane means alone (like backing up your frickin’ work, right?) At the moment, I am working on some magic for something I can’t assure by my own actions alone – and the magic part is easy enough. It’s doing what I can do mundanely that is dreary and exhausting. And yet, for the magic to work, I have to work, so here I am, spending several hours a day mundanely supporting my magic. (Nope, not gonna say what it is – ’cause I don’t want to jinx it. I’ll try to remember to mention it later, after it’s successful.) It feels like I have been doing this for weeks, but in fact, this is only the third day. More lessons in patience. Sigh.
I don’t feel like writing now – not till I know whether I have to forget everything I’ve already done and start over (because it would be really impossible to exactly recreate what I didn’t back up), and also because I am heavily focused on the mundane aspects of the magical work right now. But … I find it easier to be patient with my writing – looking for the right word, waiting till I’m really sure it’s ready before I hit “publish,” and such like. (No, that doesn’t mean there are no typos in my books. It just means I missed them no matter how careful I was, even when I read it aloud backwards and stuff like they tell you to do when you’re proofing your own stuff.) But patience is an important skill for a writer, so I’ll trust that it’s good that I’m getting some practice from the non-writing bits o’ life right now.
It’s just been the Autumn Equinox, a time of balance, when we’re between Summer and Winter, and that, too, requires patience of us all – so I guess I’ll call it all good, and hope you’re finding as much patience as you need, too.