Take Care of Your Computer

So a few months back, I was working on my book, and all of a sudden, my screen flashed white. I took it to my dad when the screen didn't come back on after a few minutes, and he regretted to tell me that my hard drive was "dead as a doornail." At the time, I was under a lot of stress. A fundraiser I was organizing was happening the next day; I had an exam coming up; and my cousins were in town. My mind did not process how much I lost. For those of you that are as dependent on your laptop as I am, I am giving you fair warning before this happens to you and you lose everything, BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE! Get an external drive; store your work on all these new online storage devices. Do whatever you have to do to save the life you share with your computer.
Let me just give you an idea of what I lost:
ALL 2,000 songs in my music library
My first book, my second book, and the beginning of my third book
All of my short stories
All the pictures that I had before Facebook and that were not shared on my parents' computer
All of my personal work and online quotes that I had found
All of my usernames and passwords.
When I eventually slowed my mind down enough to realize what I had lost, I was blown away and horrified all at the same time. I had just spent an entire fall break making great strides in editing my book. All gone. That was the knife to the gut. I had edited at the minimum-five chapters, and now I had to go back to chapter two. But it wasn't that easy. When Apple recovered my computer and put in a new hard drive, I had to update my software, and the pages that I downloaded was not compatible with plain old word. So after I would go to my "editor elf," and she would send the new copy to me, I couldn't open it on my computer to work on it until I would see her again. My computer crashed October 18. I did not find a compatible pages software until today, December 21--that's over two months not being able to work on my book on my own time. I feel like I have had a dragon-sized weight lifted off my shoulders. So...moral of the horror story...ALWAYS back up your computer. Don't be like me--don't learn the hard way. The hard was is no fun. (But to be fair, the hard drive was six years old...if that says anything of how strong Macs are...)