Wednesday, April 6, 2011

AB HOARD

Recently, on author, Sarah Fine’s blog…
(she’s a practicing child psychologist, by the way)
She posted about hoarding.
She also recommended the novel:
Dirty Little Secrets: Child of a Hoarder by C.J. Omololu.
I thought the topic and her assessment of the book interesting…
And I have on occasion watched the show Hoarders on A&E.
Now, while I don’t physically hoard…
OK, I do have closets stuffed with lots of stuff…

Especially clothes that don’t fit or I know I’ll never wear again…
And yes, my pantry may include outdated cans…
I think I’m fairly normal.
But still I wonder…
Though I may not physically hoard…
Do I virtually hoard?
Coincidentally, the same day of Sarah’s blog post…
I had perused files on my laptop and found…
Old versions of many manuscripts, short stories and poems…
And while I now have current versions that are so much better…

And all these files are backed up on a flash drive and Carbonite…
I was still hesitant to delete them.
And while keeping all these files in virtual space is no biggie…
Because really, I can run out and buy more space if I need to…
I was emotionally attached to these files…
They represented far more than just pixilated words on a screen.
To delete them and send them to the recycle bin…
Felt like I would be deleting part of my life…
And all the years of struggling to be a writer…
Including all the dreams of being a published author...
Would evaporate…
With just one quick “delete” keystroke.
I’ve been pondering this feeling of being deleted for several days now…
If my words are so easily deleted…
Am I so easy to dismiss?
Tell me…
Can you relate?
Are you a virtual hoarder?


Always, Em-Musing


8 comments:

Brenda Drake said...

I'd have to say that I am a virtual hoarder. It's easy to let things pile up when you can just make a new folder and hide it. Hmmm ... I should Spring clean my virtual stash. :D

Elena Solodow said...

This has happened to me several times! Even though I have hard copies and back-ups, erasing them off a hard drive is still so hard to do. I think it has a lot to do with the feeling that everyone one of those drafts you started with a feeling that this was "the one" - but it wasn't. Deleting them is like deleting hope, in a way.

PM Kavanaugh said...

I can be about my writing. But work files? No! I love, love, love to toss out old files once the project is done. I selectively keep stuff that I think might come in handy down the road for a new client. So I don't have to reinvent the wheel (although I usually have to do more inventing than I would like, since every client's project is just that much different.) What kills me is the duplication of both paper and electronic files. What is with that? I thought we were supposed to be living in the paperless era by now. But nope, there they are...cabinets and paper boxes filled with paper files. Oops...does this make me BOTH a virtual and a real-world hoarder?:)

Misha Gerrick said...

I've only ever once willingly deleted one of my manuscripts.

It took me six months to start writing again.

So... I'll need at least as good a reason as that one to deleted another file from my computer.

By the way, as long as our tendencies don't harm other people's standard of living, hoarding isn't an issue. ;-P

Joanne said...

Whenever I finish a writing project, I go through my Word files and clean house. I might combine files, move files, and definitely eliminate things that are no longer necessary. It's something I routinely do and helps to keep me focused ...

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