As some of you know, I’m currently working on a book. Over the past several weeks I’ve been working through edits. This morning I woke up early and put in about an hour of work before I closed out of the document I was working in. As soon as I clicked on the X, a feeling of dread came over me. I wasn’t sure if I had saved what I was working on. I quickly tried to re-open the document and was greeted with a file not found message.
More than 60 pages of edits…
Gone.
There were several stages of panic. I tried frantically to open up the document more than a dozen times. I searched through all of my files to find out the last time it was saved. I immediately fired off an email to my editor to find out if she could help.
Nothing worked.
I stewed for forty-five minutes. How could it have not saved? Everything automatically saves now. I couldn’t believe that I had lost my work. I had lost valuable time and effort. Worse, I would have to expend more time and effort to accomplish my goal. I became angry about it. I snapped at my family. I railed against the state of modern technology.
After the anger gradually subsided, I was finally ready to accept it. I was ready to move on and go back to my initial document to redo edits. At this stage of acceptance, I logged onto my computer and saw the edited file staring back at me.
Relief washed over me.
And I learned something:
I would never get those forty-five minutes back. Time spent angry, distraught and frantically worried. Time spent snapping at my family, starting off their day negatively instead of in a positive manner. Time that was…
Gone.
Lesson learned.
No matter how bad or how good you think life is at any given moment, wake up, be thankful, and share positivity with others.
Rich (@RACzyz)