A New Journey

About a month ago, my hard drive crashed.  Up until then, I had never been serious about backing up my data, and I lost nearly everything.  

I was in the process of slowly upgrading my PC, and the last thing to replace on my list was my HDD.  It was nearing six years old and had been faithful everyday; I had no worries about its performance (silly me). I was holding off replacing it because of the expense incurred from upgrading all the other components and my credit card balance was getting dangerously high. 

I still remember that fateful event.  I was watching The Biggest Loser and my PC suddenly shut off.  No BSOD, no "powering down" warnings.  I quickly jumped up to turn it back on thinking there had been some kind of power outage (I live in a rural area and they happen every now and then).  It booted right up and went into some kind of Windows repair hell mode.  I tried in vain for weeks, trusting the message "Windows is repairing itself, this may take over an hour" was true.  I let it do its thing for hours, days, weeks... Nothing changed!  

I was growing more and more frustrated, with myself, my PC, and technology itself.  Finally, I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't going to repair myself, and after borrowing some disc repair/recovery software from a friend, I knew that everything had been lost.  It was a total loss.  

I started thinking of giving up entirely on using a PC.  during the few weeks I had been foolishly relying on Windows to repair itself, I had grown increasingly reliant on my iPhone to scratch my computing itch.  In this short period of time, I grew more and more appreciative of mobile apps and the convenience of having my phone with me at all times wherever I was.  This further cemented my thinking that mobile was the way to go, and forgo trying to get back on my PC.

But the amount of money I had recently put into my PC was weighing on me.  It started to become a huge emotional drain.  I had to fix this thing!  The more I used my phone, I started to realize there are some things that are suited much better to a desktop machine.  

So I mustered my courage and went out to buy a new hard drive.  I was pleasantly surprised they were much more affordable since I last bought one!  This wasn't going to be so bad after all...  

I installed it shortly after and was presented with the fresh newness of nothingness on the drive.  A clean slate!  No backed up files to dirty it with!  No OS either, but what did that matter?  I had a functioning machine again!  For several months prior to the crash, I had a growing frustration with Windows 7 which had previously been on my computer.  It had some serious problems with it that were probably mostly my fault for not maintaining it as well as I should have, but basically I wasn't able to install certain new programs and it outright refused to download and install windows updates.  I never even got a prompt to upgrade to Windows 10, that's how far behind it was! 

So I decided to ditch Windows for good, and go back to using Ubuntu linux.  I had used Ubuntu several years ago and though it had a lot of shortcomings, I always enjoyed using it.   So I downloaded the latest version and installed it on my new hard drive.  Wow!  Ubuntu had changed a lot!  I was instantly inspired by this new OS on my desktop.  It was a breath of fresh air, a new beginning, an opening to a new era... 

It was so refreshing starting off with a brand new everything on my computer.  I felt free.  All the cluttered files and unending desktop shortcuts; GONE!  All the nonsense from the past that was weighing me down and slowing down my computer, erased!  I am not a very organized person, but I've always wanted to change that.  

Change is hard though.  I've fantasized for a long time of a house fire suddenly and finally taking away everything and giving me a new start on life.  Looks like I got a virtual house fire instead!  Having lost everything on my computer was tough, but it reinforced an idea I like to remind myself of often.  Good things come from the bad.  Yeah it sucked that I lost all my files.  But then again, it was good because I was freed from a lot of technology anxiety I was unaware of.  A weight was lifted from my brain.  I felt lighter, cleaner, healthier.  This surprised me!  

Since then, I have taken this experience and I am actively trying to apply it to my physical space.  Decluttering can be a daunting task, but I am slowly but surely getting rid of the mess and stress of the excess in my life.  

Today is going to be a good day!