A crash course in priorities, hubris, and that fickle fiend, technology

My laptop crashed last night, just after I’d uploaded the weekend’s photos.

I fought with it a while, with just enough expertise to recognize futility and just enough inanity to hope my repeated pounding on an offending key might somehow revive the thing.

Panic set in quickly as I realized I had not backed up my files all summer and I indulged in a good, long, accusing glare at my useless-in-this-case external hard drive. It didn’t help.

At times like these I bless the ubiquity of social media and all those photos I shared because they still exist in this world and I know I can retrieve them any time.  Other photos remain trapped, though, and I recall a recent conversation I had with my sister regarding my impish little niece, who has recently taken to darting away when she sees me focus my camera.

“You would not believe the cute pictures I have of Erin,” I bragged, following a recent family reunion. Did hubris land me here?

Here is the pep talk I gave myself as I tossed and turned last night, furious with myself over the potential loss of an entire summer’s worth of photos.

I’m worried about pictures, but the people in them, the ones I love, are currently doing just fine. I knock wood as I write that, because I know a single phone call can change that, but on this last day of summer vacation, all of my people are exactly where they should be and I’m extremely grateful for that.

I’m also grateful for the good, though occasionally unnecessarily condescending people who work as computer technicians. My dead laptop and I will be visiting them at exactly 10 this morning.

I think we’ve all learned something here and I’ll sum it up for you:

• Back up your files, especially your precious photos!
• Pictures are important, but people are even more so and, if you’re lucky enough to find yourself frustrated by technology on a late summer night, count your blessings that the people whose images you’re trying to capture are doing just fine.