Spring cleaning ... sort of

I’ve been away from my blog for a few days, not because I’ve run out of ideas or topics. It seems my laptop decided to take its own little vacation—a long one. Fortunately, I am a backup fool so everything I’ve fed into the trusty Toshiba was duplicated on my nifty little removable backup drive that ensures the safety of all my files.

When I retrieved my folders, documents, files, photos, illustrations, and other sundry items, I decided to do a quick count of all the notes, articles and stories I’ve fed to my computer in the last three years. The final tally? Six-hundred and thirty-two.

Sadly, my documents folder looks about as cluttered and messy as my bedroom closet.

Some of the contents had very weird titles. I had to open more than a dozen just to see what was going on in my head when I composed them. I trashed three and combined four into a single file of notes. I don’t even remember writing a couple of them. Two went into the trash.

There’s a good part to the whole exercise. I found some gems, some thoughtful and insightful paragraphs that will fit nicely into a current project.

There’s also a downside to this experience. In order to figure out what many of these files have to say, I’ll have to open them one by one, read them, and decide whether or not they have value. (I guess this is akin to—gasp--spring cleaning.

I just hope when you read this, you’ll remind yourself that your writing is important and you’ll make sure you back it up… often.