Two important principles I need to remember:
Principle 1: The rule of holes: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
I’m not entirely sure how I managed to forget this rule for living, but, well, I did. I’ve found it relevant in work and life recently. At work, I’ve stopped digging on some projects that just needed to be put aside. They’re not priorities for now. I may never pick them up again. But I was in a hole, and I needed to just. stop. digging.
In life, this quote came to mind when I realized that my desperate desire to catch up on past blog posts from all of you was keeping me from knowing about what’s going on in your lives right now. So, although I would love to read every word, I think it’s time to stop digging. I’m getting even further behind and I’m not close to catching up. I am probably going to have to unsave a bunch of posts. Please know that I do care about what’s going on in your lives – but I would rather be more up to date than stuck in the past. You all are too important to me!
Principle 2: Never assume, because, well, you know why. 🙂 (And if you don’t, make a comment and I’ll share what Mrs. Markle told my 6th grade class…)
Friends, I almost – key word, ALMOST – trashed a hard drive that has about 30 years of my life on it. I know. I assumed it was just time machine system snapshots from my old laptop. I was so, so wrong.
I thought I’d somehow lost all my files from my PhD program and before. I thought I’d somehow lost any and all documents that were related to my life in the early 2000s. And it turns out that no, I hadn’t. They were on the hard drive. The hard drive I almost took for recycling today.
I almost cried. It was such an unexpected gift. I know, you’re thinking, dude, it’s a hard drive. But when you have a path like mine (lots of twists and turns, and yes, Engie, I still owe you a list of all the jobs I’ve held), it helps to have a bit of digital memory to help me recall all the good and bad moments along the way. For me, those files remind me of where I’ve been and how far I have come.
So never, ever assume. Please. Check the hard drive. Ask the question. Find out why someone did something, rather than assuming they did it for x reason. I’ve never regretted doing so, and I hope you don’t either.
Take care, my friends. Happy weekend. I look forward to catching up on your current lives soon.
Stop digging. Such sage advice and so, so relevant for me right now! Thanks for sharing, Anne.
Sadly, I am someone who DID manage to lose years of pictures/data from my university era and I’m STILL very sad about it 🙁
I have a photo of the little metal sign that had that saying, Elisabeth, the first time I encountered it. It’s a print – I can picture it – and if I can ever get into the photo albums in my storage closet (sighhh…) I will scan it in and share. 🙂
Oh, I’m so sad FOR you, losing some of the documents and pictures and data that represent some of your history. Of course, the memories are there, but sometimes READING the file just takes you back. <3
Anne, whenever I have taken a blog break, I come back to something insane like 300 unread posts or something. I shudder to think what’s going to happen when I travel for three weeks in Oct/ Nov, what with NaBloPoMo. I am pretty sure my unread posts will be insane. But I use The Old Reader, which shows things in reverse chronological order, so I always see the most recent posts first. Sometimes I will just read the latest post, and then move on with my life. I can always go back and see the older posts later, I figure. Anyway, that’s just what I do, otherwise it would be way too overwhelming!
Nicole, as always, you are full of wisdom. I confess, I have skipped right over multiple posts since I posted that, and removed them from my Read Later. I feel so much better but also need to do a bit more curating. That’s okay – people will a) forgive me, and b) probably will not even notice!
Look, I have no guilt when my Feedly gets out of control and I just mark everything read and start with a clean slate. I don’t know why other people feel guilty about it! If you come across something confusing, you can always dig back in the archives and try to figure it out. No guilt!
I recently did something CRAZY to get myself out of a hole. I threw money at it. So, our yard was out of control. What I needed was a pickup truck, a three-day weekend when the compost site was open all three days, and the gumption to deal with it. But then my husband got sick and the yard was really crazy and I called a nice young man, paid him $250, and he came over with a pickup truck and did what would have taken me forty hours to do in four hours. Well worth it. Now I don’t cower in fear when I look in the yard and tomorrow when I do yardwork, I won’t end up hysterical over it.
I am SO PROUD of you, Engie (sorry, maintaining anonymity here…). So damn proud. I know how much it must have taken to dig deep and just… have someone else do it. But the relief of looking out at the yard must be immense. (It didn’t seem bad when I was there, but what do I know?)
I confess I have skipped a few of your book posts. And maybe workout recaps. Thanks for forgiving me in advance. 😉
I liked the concept of the need to stop digging. We get in so many such situations in life!
Oh! I got hiccups about the hard drive! I’ve made stupid decisions about hard drive folders, Lightroom libraries…. and deleted stuff.
You’re not missing anything from me. Same bench presses and photos of Irish cows… but I’ve been thinking about how you were doing since I haven’t seen you around in a while.
Isn’t that a fantastic setting? The hard drive, ugh. Close call. I have a backup backup arriving and shall copy the files over there stat. And put it in my fire proof box. Yikes!
I have seen posts from you and oh, I owe you emails, too. I have it flagged and need to just make the time. It’s been a challenge the last few days, for reasons that are completely stupid. I need to do better at finding time for me. As always. A chronic refrain from me.
Miss you, my friend. <3
Yes, you should have seen posts from me now that I found out my RSS feed was disabled and turned it back on! Pfff! I’ve unpublished one of those posts though… I need to learn to wait a day or two to know if I even want to publish. Still in “learning to write” mode after all these years.
Oh, Susanne, I hear you on the post/don’t post thing. I hate making my posts negative and/or whiny, and I will often write those, then copy th text over to a Word doc for my journal, and delete the post. For me, it’s “Do I REALLY want to share this?” and if the answer is no, then… it either dies in the Drafts folder or gets totally deleted. Hope you are well, my friend. <3
Yes! Getting out of the hole is always good advice.
Obviously I love the bloggy blogs, and I always read them but I don’t always find time to comment. I do my best and trust that it’s Ok -and on the flip side I enjoy it when people leave me comments but I don’t “take attendance”.
Yay that the hard drive made it. Phew! I have a couple of backups for the important stuff, but there’s no system that’s 100% guaranteed.
Thank you, Birchie, for your excellent perspective on the blog thing. I did read your vacation posts but will probably skip ahead to Real Time posts now. 🙂
And yes, the hard drive. Egads. I would never have known! (There was a folder – I swear – named “Files from Old Floppies”. Do I WANT to go there, or just have the option? Hmmm…)
Oh goodness, you were trying to catch up on blogs? I guess that is part of the issue with using a blog reader or subscribing. I am so old school, I think most people were ahead of me even when I started. I have a blog roll on the right side of my blog, and I click on them, and see if there is a new post. Sometimes the prior post is one I have read, so I’m current. Sometimes there are a handful of new to me posts in their queue. I never try to go back and get caught up. Perhaps this is shitty of me, because I KNOW I miss important details about my blog friends’ lives, but I have to make it work somehow, and that is how it works for me.
I used to do that, Julie! I did. But, well, I now try to keep up with a lot of people’s lives and I haven’t been able to add a blog roll. There was something easier, for me, in Google Reader. Sigh. We lost that option long ago, and Feedly is reasonably good, but there’s something about the unread posts that just…jumps out at me. Marking them as read would seem to help with that. Hm.
Anyway! Hope you are well and I also hope to finally get to one of your posts that isn’t so old that I can’t comment on it! Yes, it’s been THAT bad. Sigh.
Do not feel any pressure to read my older posts. Just mark all as read without guilt. You won’t miss much. Just lots of talk about this stupid never ending flare which I needed an image guided injection to hopefully resolve. If that doesn’t work I don’t know what I will do!! But I can’t even think about that. Phil and I got into one of those ‘digging a hole’ conversations about my level of steroid-driven irritability last night… it didn’t really go anywhere and yet we kept picking up our shovels but we did abandoned the hole digging fairly quickly because there is no resolution. I am irritable and I am aware of it and I loathe how I feel. And yet, I can’t go off the steroids until I am in less pain. Ahhh the joys of marriage and the fun conversations you have at times. 🙂
Thanks, Lisa. I have read several of your older posts to catch up on health-related stuff, primarily. I am so so sorry that your flare is still flaring. That’s just not….fair. Sorry to rhyme, but, well, it’s not. I hope it is better soon. It’s so darn frustrating.
And I know – from experience – how hard those conversations can be. Thinking of you and sending pain relieving thoughts. <3
We 100% do NOT expect you to read and comment on everything we write! Just like you don’t expect of us! So I am glad you aren’t holding yourself to that anymore.
Well, um, I’m glad you feel that way, because I am so far behind on yours that comments have been closed! I shall skip ahead, thanks for the go-ahead! 🙂
I understand that feeling of guilt at marking everything as read, but sometimes, that’s what we have to do! Like Birchie said, I don’t think anyone is “taking attendance” to see who is commenting on what posts. I am certainly not! We’re all doing the best we can and the important thing here is the relationships we build, which are formed on much more than comments. <3 I am really proud of you for giving yourself the chance to get caught up. It will feel amazing!
I’m starting to realize this is what I need to do with some of my overwhelming digital files. You would not believe the number of downloads I have on my work computer – and if I downloaded it in 2021, and haven’t yet needed it? Well, um, yeah. Sometimes you just have to mark it read -or, in my case, delete the file – and move on. I need to get better about this!
And thank you for this: “…the important thing here is the relationships we build, which are formed on much more than comments.”
You are exactly right, my friend. <3 Happy weekend.
When someone stops commenting for a while, I think nothing of it, then I hope they’re okay, and if I see them appear again I am just very happy. I have never, not once, thought “I wonder why x stopped caring about me”. Stop digging is THE best advice, and it’s also one of those wise pieces of advice that I need to remind myself of again and again.
I erased all of my emails once by accident – I thought I could just do it on my phone, but they were all gone. I was – I don’t know, devastated and terrified, and then I decided I would just have to not care. I am almost too good at keeping stuff, so on balance it was probably not a bad thing. But I’m glad it didn’t happen with your hard drive.
Thank you, Allison. I do the same – wondering where someone may be and if they’re okay. That usually prompts me to check in on their blog or email if I’m really worried. I’m trying to get better about deleting the digital files that NEED to be deleted (see my response to Stephany, below, about my digital file overwhelm at work…). But sometimes? I delete something I really should not have and… just have to get over it. Sigh.
Oh, that hard drive. What a treasure! I completely understand! A couple of years ago, I found some of these old “floppy disks” that I saved stuff on in College and I was able to transfer all of that to a (modern) hard drive and there were letters/journal entries from my college days and when I first met Jon. I am so glad I was able to preserve that!
And re: the digging: did you read my mind? Because I just talked about how I have trouble catching up with blogs after a weekend away and you’re so right: it’s more important to stay up to date than digging in the past. We can always go back if we really need to! My approach is now: work my Feedly backwards!
I am so glad you were able to find those old floppies – crazy that they lasted! – and transfer them. What treasures. That’s kind of like what I found – I have a hard time handwriting (long story) so often I will write a journal entry in Word and then print it for my journal. I know, weird, but I like having a hard-copy one, too… 🙂
So glad I am not the only one who was digging deeper and not just recognizing the situation for what it was. Do we need a “diggers” support group? 😉
Love both principals. Will write them down for myself as reminders. I am in my head a lot, and digging, so it’s time to stop digging. I love mind reading lol so i assume I know what people think- I have NO idea! Glad you checked the hard drive. I went to Chile on a Fulbright 6 years ago and I cannot find the pictures, I think they may be on one of the hard drives.
Digging – turns out it takes up a lot of time! I think it’ll work out well for me. 🙂 Hopefully you, too!
Oh, I hope you find your pictures! Fingers crossed.