Well it's been a while since I wrote in this blog - but a lot has happened in that time. My beloved aunt died, which saw me take a few days off to simply get my head around it all. She was young, vibrant, bubbly, intelligent, beautiful and more like a sister and a best-friend to me than an aunt. She was close to my age, so we kind of grew up together. I'll miss you more than you know, Tiana.
When I did feel up to working on my freelance stuff again, I switched on my computer and my hard drive decided it was time to die in sympathy. It went out in spectacular style, with some hissing and a little show of fireworks. It would have been pretty if it wasn't signifying the death of my work-machine.
Without my laptop, I can't work, which means I can't earn money. My computer is my most essential piece of work equipment.
While my computer was busy dying, it decided to fry my wireless modem as a bonus. Unfortunately, I also had my external hard drive hooked up to the machine because I was only backing up my files that same instant. Of course, my melodramatic computer decided to sizzle my external hard drive as well.
So for the past two weeks I've been frantically trying to replace my computer and get my internet connection up and running properly again, re-install software and programs I need to stay working, figure out the missing entries in my income spreadsheets, find files and articles that needed to be sent to clients, locate lost email addresses and then catch up on a back log of work that had gone past deadline during the crisis.
I bought two smaller computers and a new external hard drive. If one computer decides to go wrong, then I now have another in the study that contains just the essential business information (income spreadsheets, expenses, work schedules etc).
This also meant that I was behind with my work load by several days. I spent five days just writing at double time to catch up to where I should have been.
Now the work files are operating again, I realize that I'm missing some of my most cherished photos of my daughter and my aunt together.
A computer wiz is working hard to retrieve my information off the external hard drive right now for me - but I learned that if you truly value your freelance writing business, you'll remember to back up everything very regularly.
