It’s like a car crash, huh?
This newsie is supposed to be about joy and sparking creativity. Instead, let’s talk about shame.
It was awful from beginning to end.
I have one hard drive with all my pictures and videos on it. Photos of my grandma’s wedding, my mom’s graduation, that one time I played sports, my kids’ births, first bites of chocolate pudding, Christmas mornings—all on one drive.
So when I plugged it into my computer and nothing happened, I panicked. I imagined a future where my kids had no pictures of growing up. Anxiety, fear, anger, while my partner and I attempted retrieval of the data. Eventually, a fancy new drive, with all the retrieved data, was returned to us from the white-gloved, clean room in California where they do magic of one kind and another.
I plugged my drive in, anxiously awaiting all those gap-toothed smiles and dirty faces. The $3.6k was going to be totally worth it.
It was the wrong drive.
An old backup of an old computer. The nostalgia drive was safely tucked away in the wrong bag in my office for some reason that I am still uncertain about.
No. That cannot be right. We didn’t just spend enough money to fly our whole family to New Zealand on nothing, did we? Enough money to buy Nick a man shed. Enough money for three months of groceries. Enough money for all kinds of things. I could go on. And I did.
For days. Replaying my idiocy and haste. Imagining how else that money could have been spent. Berating myself into a deep hole of shame while presenting to the world with a smile: “Well, that’s certainly disappointing, but it’s just money.”
Ah, I think I have found the point of this long rant and perhaps the point of this life event.
If you steep in shit behind a curtain, eventually the smell will begin to waft. That’s some quality proverb shit right there.
This week I have been agitated, short, sad. I yelled at my partner, and yelling isn’t in my lexicon, except for the occasional shout of joy. All the regular stresses—a crushing weight.
The cost of the mistake was $3.6k. But I also let it take days of my life. Days. The money is gone. The mistake was made. But my continuing to hold onto it and its dead corpse is growing the cost exponentially.
I’m setting it down now.
If you ever find yourself steeping in shit, call me. I will be happy to pull back the curtain and let the stink out.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
Henry Ford
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