Life can be frustrating.
I have a habit of writing poems. When something inspires me I start to scribble. I fill pages with scribbles and then type them and work them to create what I call poems. I can condense my thoughts and feelings into some short flow of words. I find that process simple. I can examine my own head. I can express my thoughts.
I then publish them on my blog and save them in a document. When I have collected enough I publish these poems as a book.
It’s a system.
I know that my ‘poems’ have limited appeal to others. They are more of a personal expression. Not many people ever purchase a book of my poetry. I publish them for myself. I’m fine with that. They mean something to me.
Recently I had accumulated sufficient to begin to think of producing the next volume. That requires a bit of work – designing, writing an intro and blurb. But I enjoy that.
Last night I felt inspired to create a few more ‘poems’ and followed the same procedure. I put them on my blog and copied them into my ‘book’. I pressed save. My computer came up with an alternative name. Without thinking I told it to replace the existing document. I pressed the button.
Only then did I notice that some forty pages were missing. For some reason my computer had created another document and I had saved my new poems to this.
A press of the button.
Forty pages lost.
I’ve done this before. Once I had been working on a novel until four in the morning and, out of fatigue, pressed the wrong button and erased forty pages of writing.
Nothing to be done.
The press of a button.
You cannot go back.
Except, this time, I could. So I spent a frustrating hour retrieving the lost poems from my blog and restoring them to my book. An hour that could have been better spent.
This time a press of the button only caused minor irritation and loss of time.
Sometimes a rash decision has far more serious and far-reaching consequences!