Back To Basics

Recently as I sat at my computer typing away, chatting and writing, I heard a funny noise. It sounded like a motor grinding and then no sooner had I typed an “OMG”, my pc came to a crashing halt. For a moment I sat there in disbelief. I waited a few moments in total shock as if someone had taken a knife to my throat. First came a sense of denial. I knew if I just talked nicely to my circuited friend that he would wake up and take me down the superhighway toward porn and instant messaging. Control E, I pressed. Hell I pressed every key on the board, and even tried opening and closing the DVD drive. But alas, quicker than a chat window could open, my beloved hard drive was gone.

As you can no doubt tell from my ridiculous attempts to revive my mechanical buddy when it comes to computers I am pretty much illiterate. Sure I can find a hottie with an internet proclaimed nine inches at a moments notice. I can rant and rave in a nano second and even outbid other eBay junkies at the last second. But what I cannot do is understand the inner workings of what is without a doubt the most used thing in my life, well most used thing that isn’t attached. So there I sat with a black screen and a computer that refused to do anything that my fingers commanded it to do.

Then a realization came over me. Given that I had only had minor technical problems before with a computer, I had never even thought to backup my files. It wasn’t until after my personal Crash of 2009 that I even knew how to backup a file. In a moment of panic I came to grips with the fact that basically everything in my life was lost for good. Gone were all of the muscled wrestler pictures that I had saved over the years, along with my favorite list of websites. Buried deep inside my computers seemingly locked vault were all of my writings, including all of my past Bear Talk columns. They were all gone never to be returned again.

Of course just because I knew that everything was gone and irretrievable it didn’t stop from still trying everything I could to do so. I had Rod work his magic, and though he is much more adept at computer technology than I am, he didn’t possess the wizardry necessary to bring back my collection of hairy men and oh so important ramblings. I had to face it, everything was gone, and the only thing I could was a complete system restore. For a moment there was a glimpse of hope that a restore could save some of my gems, but that light faded fast, and I was left with a computer that was sent back just this side of a Commodore 64.

Once I succumbed to that fact that I had been frozen back to the ice age, I decided that maybe it was a sign from a higher power that perhaps, just maybe, that my computer had become my life rather than just a part of it. I had invested so much time into building a cyber life. From friends to photos of the places I had been my life had been stored on a hard drive, instead of where it truly should have been. Suddenly it occurred to me that instead of living my life through a monitor screen, I should have instead looked outside the window of my desk and stepped away from the computer.

I questioned myself as to what I had done before computers came along. While they certainly do make our lives easier and more interesting, there is something to be said for actual physical contact with other people. Memories stored in a file, cannot compare to the memories still yet to be made. And even the photos that are so easily edited and altered cannot compare to those Polaroids from the past.

Now as I sit here typing this, again at my computer, I do so with an appreciation that I never felt before. I am much more aware of that even with the wrong stroke of a key that it can disappear. But what is a constant that can’t be taken away are the thoughts and memories behind the keyboard. I think maybe I will go get a pen and paper for a change.