Is there any feeling so desolate as the shocking realization that your cocoon-like world of social media contacts and personal verification systems have disappeared in front of your very eyes and that you are no longer able to talk to the world you have created in your social media ??
I mean – is there ??
The first reaction is one of disbelief; this can’t be happening to me? Can it?
But, Oh Yes, it can, and has, as the full horror of the situation creeps over your horizon. Unsaved work, lists of email addresses, possibly diaries attached to an email system, digital subscriptions to newspapers, your daily lifeblood all denied! You look at your equipment and wonder what it was that caused this unholy mess in your life?
Did you press the wrong key? Did you respond to the prompt the wrong way? Your mind thrashes around trying to make some sense of it all – quick solutions flood your thoughts, just reboot the bloody thing, that’ll work! Does not !.
The next step in this process is to draw back a bit and talk yourself into being calm and looking at the problem dispassionately – as if that is possible ??
Mumbling to yourself is always pacifying, but will not bring back the lost world. A quick cup of coffee, a phone call to a friend explaining the horror are actions which follow in quick succession. The friend, although wanting to help usually twists the knife by innocently asking, ‘ What did you do wrong ? ‘
There it is – it is you who have destroyed your world!!
Redemption pops up its head over the wall like ‘ Kilroy was here ‘ – a fleeting glimpse and a flood of relief as you grasp, like a drowning person. Onto the idea of “ back-up. “
Of course! I have done my backups and all is saved. Oh, what relief? Now it is just a matter of connecting up the backup drive, run it and back to normal.
This is the point where the cruelty of life strikes like a sword through your heart. As you seek to connect your backup your screen remains black, as a dog’s guts. Because you did not renew the backup package when it asked you to - ‘ job for another day ‘ – you whispered.
So, there you are, confronted by your dead computer, smothered in guilt because it is your fault that it is dead, I mean, whose else could it be?
Surprisingly only half a day has passed, although it seems as if your life has been consumed. Thought processes begin – should I fix this? Is it worth it? Maybe I can take it to a ‘ geekaroo ‘ place, and they will save the data on the hard drive, re-load it all back into a new machine and life returns to normal?
Now, this process is normal and will effectively give you back contact with the ether and the globe. But, deep in your heart of hearts wriggles a small worm. A small worm that could have some unwanted outcomes. This is the small worm of the last porn page you accessed two weeks ago when you were two-thirds of a way through a bottle of red and you were home on your own!!
We are not talking hardcore porn just the usual huffing and puffing as the images took you back to times when you did not need to look at that stuff; and, you were only curious anyway plus you had deleted the page/history anyway.
So…what is the problem? Well, none really. It was just a thought [ that will not go away ]. But you brush it aside and call your friend who happens to run his own IT business and is a wizard at fixing this kind of stuff. No mates rates, mind you, none of that, but, at this, point you would pay almost anything to get the bloody thing back online as it was!
The call is made and before you know it you are back in the guilt trap.
The first question your mate asks is, “ What did you do? “
You reply, ‘ That you did nothing overt, it just happened.’
Your Mate, ‘ Mate, this stuff doesn’t just happen, you must have touched something or flicked a response…somehow.’
You know how it goes?
The machine is collected from your place and your mate begins to work on it and you get used to the idea of how it used to be when you were not a slave to a plastic machine that beeped.
Then comes the day, usually the third day, when the machine is returned. All is working well, your life is back to normal with usual FB contacts and brawls, email demands etc. and digital media displays telling you that Trump is still being investigated, Brexit has not happened, the tax cuts were waved through after some ego propping posturing and that 347 gazillion people have glued themselves to something as a protest over something.
And all is well until the next Friday night when you are in the local, with your computer mate, third beer down, feeling good and relaxed when your mate looks at over the top of his beer…
‘ Mate, you did not delete the page. I did not know you liked ‘em like that ? ‘
As you try to get inside your beer glass you mumble, “ I don’t. “
Mate, “ Then why did you go the page and look at it “
You see, there is no sensible answer to that. That is why I don’t.
