Boy, have I had an interesting week. As in the purported Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times".
I am in France, teaching for two weekends in a row. In between, this week, I am out at a student/friend's lovely home near the forest of Fontainebleu. A beautiful, peaceful village; quiet, quirky home. I had mixed agendas - will I spend time working or resting or both? - but this is typical for me and I settled in after a few hours on the first day,
Tuesday. A nice walk in the forest, some good planning for my upcoming program on Shambhala Online called Write Now... Looking good.
Back in the flat, I diddled with some video on my phone, trying to get talks uploaded and such onto my laptop. Learning Word Press in a new way, I was a bit frustrated, but moving ahead. In a moment of great efficiency, I emptied the trash on my desktop without realizing I'd somehow, accidentally (now I see it as ironically) put my most current folder, with above-mentioned materials for the upcomig class, etc, in the trash prior.
The folder's name? TO DO.
As I watched the trash empty much more than the single video I thought occupied it, I scanned my desktop, which I keep pretty clean. The gap, the missing folder, was immediately apparent.
It hit me right away but in waves. When I have done this at home (not often, but it has happened) it's no biggie since we back up regularly with time machine. But I've been in Europe for over three weeks and haven't backed up. I've done hard work on some essential projects, now gone. Hundreds of photos, good ones, of and on this trip, not backed up.
Deleting and emptying this folder was a small but reperable mistake, though I didn't know that then.
Here was the real mistake: I felt strongly that I had to DO SOMETHING.
THAT was my mistake, and I did it again and again over 24 hour period.
It was hell.
But to be clear, it was hell mostly because of how I handled it.
