It’s that time again. The time of reorganising and backing up data prior to a computer rebuild. (All versions of Windows rust, and my main computer is long overdue for a clean-up.) And I got that recurring thought – how about a list of all the creatures ever hatched? Hang on, didn’t I start a blog for that?
Why, yes. Yes I did.
The data situation is actually borderline frightening, as I appear to have accumulated about 1.5Tb of data over the past quarter century. Much of that is duplicates, and I’ve finally started making a concerted effort to clear the clutter. There’s no point keeping this stuff if I can’t actually find anything when I need it. But it’s a bit of a fraught process, because not only does it take time to assess everything, it runs the risk of being the virtual equivalent of tidying up – where you start with the best of intentions, only to be found 3 hours later, lost in some fascinating book or project that happened to light in the process, and the tidying still undone.
With the computer data, there’s the added emotional weight of finding projects that were abandoned (due to lack of energy or time, or occasionally inspiration) and the realisation of the lost opportunities. It’s something I could do without at the moment, as the tides of mid-life are still being a right PitA, and the physical and mental fall-out of that is stealing a lot of the little energy and time I have left. There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do when you find them. And no, I’m not talking about computer games there – though I haven’t done a huge amount with those over the last couple of years, either. Everything’s been about getting by.