“Someday I’ll Save my Documents to an External Hard Drive”

What to keep and what to burn? A sampling...

Some things should be saved and backed up while others should be burned!

Last week I was browsing social media—the writerly stuff, not the horror show—and still I found myself caught dead in my tracks at a post. The prolific writer, teacher, editor, etc., Allison K Williams had posted a simple question on her FB, “PSA to all my writer friends - have you backed up your computer recently?” Chills went down my spine. Here I am, finally getting my writing off the ground, and trying to get what I’ve already done organized, and I could so easily lose everything that’s digital. Suddenly that seemed like an emergency, so I asked in the comments “What do I even buy?,” and someone quickly replied with a recommendation, which Allison seconded. I was off to do a little research, and pretty quickly, I had ordered one. It arrived a day later, which was almost too soon for something I’d been putting off for years. I felt like I needed another day, at least. I was intimidated.

This is the one I ended up getting.

The last time I’d bought an external hard drive, it was with advice from some Genius at the Apple store, back in 2007. That thing was so confusing and clunky to set up and figure out, then when I finally got it going, it said it would take something like 37 hours to complete the backup. I’m pretty sure I bailed at some point and to this day I don’t know if there’s anything on it. I guess I should check and figure out how to get rid of it. I’ll save that for Spring Cleaning, which I’ll be writing about here in March.

It’s been almost 20 years since then, and the tech has definitely improved. The new drive is tiny, lightweight, and it only took a quick YouTube video for me to figure out how to format it. I was able to copy all my documents, downloads, everything from my files and desktop onto this hard drive in under 40 minutes.

The new hard drive is on the right and all that other stuff is the old one.

The interesting part came after. I may have allowed myself a moment for a pat on my own back for finally being digitally responsible and getting this done. Then the regrets and the second guessing set in. What all did I copy here? Maybe I should have gone through this stuff first. So I started scrolling.

Some things that grabbed my attention:

• A whole folder of creative writing I’d done for a class in the summer of 2005, all examples of different types of writing. I had virtually no memory of writing these. There were two poems that contained memories and specific details that I could pull out to use in my memoir writing. The poems themselves are not good, but recycling is.

• A very short piece that I wrote that might be something. Might read it to my writing group tonight and see what they think.

• One of my favorite quotes, in a document all by itself, for posterity.

  From Marilyn Ferguson:

  “It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear. . . It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

  Oddly, this also describes the feeling I’ve had before when moving between laptops and counting on everything being in a cloud. Can’t hold on to that either.

• An absolutely horrible and very embarrassing poem I wrote about my ex, bemoaning the fact that we still weren’t engaged (cringe) even after he’d had a near death experience from being hit by a drunk driver. The hospital made it abundantly clear that “girlfriends” had no legal right to information or anything else, so until he was considered conscious, I was a nobody. I also found a half page rant written directly to him (that I’m sure he never saw) about the whole situation. I had to print it out just so I could burn it. Ick. I wish the girl who wrote both of those could appreciate another great Marilyn Ferguson quote, “Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.” And what I should have been afraid of is being stuck with him.

• The folder containing the awful poem was password protected, because I used to share a laptop with my ex. This was so, so stupid because he would never be that interested in my writing.

• A webinar download of an Allison K Williams Craft Talk titled “Organize Your Writing Life; Get Unstuck in 2026,” which I then watched yesterday. So valuable! At one point, Allison says, “The right partner supports your work.” As I was pumping my fist in the air, having just written about the above, she made sure to repeat it just in case anyone didn’t catch it the first time. Since this has now turned into an Allison fan blog, I’ll just link to her website here:

• An essay from the early 2000’s about a resident in the nursing home I’d worked at in high school. So many details I’d forgotten about that would have been lost forever!

• Itineraries, menus, and shopping lists from when I used to do Upward Bound, an adventure education program for high school students. We’d take these (mostly troubled) teens on an 11 day trip, no electronics, just camping, team building activities, backpacking, kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing and rappelling, and we’d bring them home stronger than they were before. Most of these kids had never done anything like this, or been away from home, or drugs, or screens, or even their friends and families for more than a day or two. I still think it’s the best, most impactful work I’ve done. Life changing, for them and for me, and though I don’t think I need any of those documents, I couldn’t quite drag them to the trash.

  

  I spent a lot of time tied to a tree belaying climbers who outweighed me!

• Several accounts of times we were evicted when I was a kid, written at all different times, from different workshop prompts and angles. I’m looking forward to combining the best of them for my memoir.

• The older documents that I opened had a strange appearance, which took me a minute to figure out. There were two spaces after the periods, and let me tell you, I did not enjoy the look. I’m so glad that changed. (Sorry for any of you die-hards out there! I fully believe in the Oxford Comma, if that helps).

There was also a lot of junk, much of it accumulated during the pandemic, when I taught from home for a year thanks to my breast cancer. I would use my personal laptop for everything, since it was bigger and easier to navigate, then I’d use my work laptop for Zooming. Unfortunately, I ended up with a lot of downloads that I need to delete, among them schedules, lesson plans, PDF’s of handouts, IEP paperwork, grading information, just so much junk I don’t ever need to look at again, so I somewhat enjoy dragging it all to the trash. Not that any of it was actual trash, it was important once. I’m just happy to be done looking at it!

It’s been quite a journey down memory lane, and there’s a ton I haven’t even explored yet, but I’m glad to know it will be there when I feel like I have the time! I may update this post when I get around to it.

Have you backed up your work/your computer recently? It’s easier than you think, and interesting to see what’s all been hiding there in the couch cushions, so to speak. If you’ve looked recently, what did you find that surprised or intrigued you? If you’ve been putting it off, for how long? What would make you get it done?

Comment below to tell me how digitally responsible, or not, you are. Better yet, comment “DONE!”