The Inheritence of Loss:

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Digital Asset Management:

 

In addition to my mother and grandmother, my book is dedicated to the pricks that broke into my car one evening in Paddington and stole the MP3 recordings I had been annotating my novel on for the past 6 months. The notion of recording my thoughts was born of my frustrations with my own digital assets. My laptop had been playing up and finding the resources and patience to have an ancient laptop repaired in Tokyo takes time, takes everything. So I opted to record rather than struggle to type.

 

I’d found this entire process really liberating. Free to “write” anywhere, anytime. I’d even begun taking my iRiver on jogs with me of an early morning. The thoughts came, long and fluid, perfect. By the time I’d flown home for Christmas (one year) I had some 14 hours of audio evidence that the book was coming along nicely.

 

That was of course, until I parked outside a girlfriends place in Paddington for a wee sleep over. Early the next morning I returned to my vehicle to head back up the F3. What I found that morning was that someone had broken into my car, stolen my MP3 player (which I’d locked in the glove box) some 3 boxes of Mini-Discs and 12 rolls of developed film. The MDs were a devastating blow and I sobbed furiously for most of the morning at the thought of having lost so much all at once. The rolls of film just freaked me out some as they were all shots of me in Asia looking very blonde and not very Asian. I drove home that morning, the smashed window a constant gush of ear bashing reminders of what had taken place the night before—the inheritance of loss.

 

Experiences such as these teach us to back everything up. Make copies of everything and to keep those copies in various places, ideally online. Safe and sound within the World Wide Web. As a part of my course work during first semester I studied a course in Digital Asset Management. Inspired I was to hear leading professional’s anecdotes of how things have gone awry and how one goes about rebuilding themselves and their careers following the loss of data. An artist, it would seem must have an incredible sense of stamina in regards to all things digital asset management and the rebuilding and rebuilding. Over and over.

 

There are few instances for the writer where the shit doesn’t hit the fan right before D-day. I had anticipated some kind of digital asset drama as my Masters submission date loomed. My facebook ‘fortune cookie’ had even suggested I “back up my files” the night before a cat pissed on my keyboard, rendering it incapable of typing complete sentences—rendering me incapable of coping. I’m often being asked to accept the fact I now live in Australia where these sorts of inconveniences are made more so by the fact no one can replace the keyboard on a Mac Book Pro in under 2 weeks! “This would never happen in Tokyo!” I curse as my laptop, some 2 weeks later, is still “being seen to.”

 

So these things happen. Plan b.

 

My sister has an identical laptop– and though incredibly busy with her own career and studies– she did offer to let me use the computer when she wasn’t using it. We had a pretty tidy system going for an entire week until we were broken in to this time last week and the last standing laptop of number 55 became but a memory. Bummer. 

 

So now a fortnight shy of D-Day I am without a computer and slowly, but surely losing the overall will to live. I mean, write.

 

I tap here now on a very beat up old iBook G4 I found in an ancient drawer in my folks office. The W key is missing. You should see how quickly I can copy and paste these days. Phenomenal.

 

This crusty old laptop also refuses to be connected to the Internet in any capacity imaginable. This becomes increasingly frustrating when you have mastered the art of attaching and emailing files while simultaneously writing an exegesis and a novel. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

 

Time management: It’s paramount to the success of anyone regarding anything. Having been an immature student in the past I’d grown quite fond of my ability to juggle tasks and deadlines while stepping on a minimal number of toes—new for me. Alas now, I sit here, attaching an audible expletive to every ‘W’ I find myself needing to type, I can’t help but laugh… A comedy of errors. A final faux pas. A great big, bloody joke. The Japanese have a word for it—shoganai—that which is beyond your control. And that I feel is exactly where it’s going to be at for the next week. And the next. Word.

 

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