This and the I’m Tired post are marked as asides—think of them as little detours on the general narrative of the new life project you’ve all signed up to join me on.
mid 18th century (as a noun): from French détour ‘change of direction,’ from détourner ‘turn away.’
This week’s change in direction comes via a hardware failure in my networked hard drive. All of my files are offline. All my words and photos and music… are all sitting right in front of me, but the little black box I use to get at them refuses to start. I’ll be able to recover everything, but it’s going to take more time, and, odd for time traveller, I sometimes feel like I don’t have as much time as I used to. Am I doing it wrong?
No—everything you’re doing is part of the plan. This is the part where everything breaks and you fix it, remember?
Oh, right…
See—I forget to remember sometimes in the face of where I’m going the path I’ve taken. I don’t see the progress I’m making because I’m always looking forward. I don’t want to look back so badly I forget it’s sometimes good to remind myself I am making progress. Two months ago I posted about having to move out of my apartment—I did it. For years I’ve wanted to work in a new industry, to do something positive for my world—and now I am. See. Progress.
The last time my life fell apart I told myself I wanted to be able to sit on my own couch and watch my own TV in time for my birthday, several months away at the time. It involved me getting a real job at a fake company and moving into the CityPlace apartment I would then leave again just over a year later. But I only missed my mark by a day. One day! Imagine if I’d actually tried at something which actually mattered…
Well—this time I am.
With that in mind, so what if I’m detoured by computer failures? I’ve recovered from worse. Bring it. And so what if I have no time this month for writing or photography? There is always next month. Or the month after that. If I had to work all through June so I could move and work all through July to get settled and work all through August to get rid of all the extra stuff I’ve been moving around with me for the last decade while I figured out what I wanted to do with myself and then toss in a rebuild of a terabyte of data just for fun—we’ve covered this already: bring it.
In fact, all these detours, all these journeys, all these trips, all these trials, all the no time between them—it’s all adding up. I remember something about me now, about how I used to be: unstoppable. It didn’t matter what needed to be done—I’d do it.
Now—where’s my swan or dolphin or rocket ship or whatever it is…?