Too busy DOING to stop to blog about it, but I really do owe all of you nice people who emailed me to see if everything is ok a thank you.
Between carting teenagers around to theater, orchestra, and friends', trying to catch up with my tasks at the parish (including work on a new website, which I hope to unveil to you all soon ;-) and finishing up our homeschooling before the 5 younger kids went down to Chicago for "Theater Camp," I've not had a minute. And when I had a minute, my hard drive crashed. Totally. Lost it all.
It's a bit disorienting, like having your purse stolen. Trying to reconstruct what once was and not grieve too much over what is irretrievable (including the next book, which was about half done... God must not need that one published any time soon!), such as Contact lists, emails that were downloaded but never read (if you are waiting for a response from me, try re-sending your message), user names/passwords/logins, our Money files... I have learned a hard lesson the hard way. I DO back-up, but my back-up had stopped working for some weeks, and I thought it would be ok. My computer wasn't that old, and it had a lot of space on it yet. It will be fine. Nothing will be lost. That won't happen to me. I back up. I update my virus software and scan regularly. I have a surge protector.
I was so vulnerable.
Well, now I have a new tool, and it's better than the last one because it's portable, which is what I need right now. Between parish work and running with kids and vacationing and theater and music camps, it's great to be able to have my workstation with me. Not that I want to be working all the time, but during a 2.5 hour drive to Chicago while the kids are watching a Netflix, I can be creating. Something. If my brain works half as well as this new tool...
Now you know where I've been and precious little of what we've been doing. All this by way of apologizing to those who were worried that something had gone wrong or that I had no words left in me. I do, but they have been invested elsewhere for the moment.
The Lord has been teaching me something since Easter (which is why I've written so little - I can be a very slow learner), and I am percolating and letting it sink in deeply and writing it out in my journal. But it has not been coherent enough to share.
I am learning at a new level something I have always known and tried to live: that all my words must be for the Word.
I hope to share more about that soon, whether it's explicitly or simply in what I write here.
Meanwhile, we can continue to pray for one another, and for this confused world we inhabit for the moment. A very brief moment.
Dear Cousin-in-law,
All may not be lost. When a hard drive fails as the primary source sometimes you can connect it to a computer as a secondary hard drive and retrieve information off off it. A computer shop can do this for you but will charge you $100 just to walk in the door. It is a simple process for you to try if you have access to another desktop computer.
Mike Mulderink
Vancouver, WA
Posted by: Mike Mulderink | June 18, 2009 at 01:46 PM