Like Losing a Limb

My laptop crashed. It’s like dying, without the pain, the near-death experience, and the eternal immobility and unconsciousness. But with the full blast experience of the suffering, the agony and every stage of the grieving process.

On the crime scene, there was no evidence as to how my laptop crashed. This was during the time that I was reviewing for the Nursing board exam and I was living at Galicia near España, Manila. It was my first week at the dormitory. Seven entire days of no TV, no internet and just books and reviewers—it’s like joining Survivor, without the ugly mudslinging and inhumane betrayal. Well at least you could imagine my craving, an ardent desire to just lie on my bed, hold the remote and go online, but as luck would have it, my laptop just wouldn’t turn on. When I brought it to my cousin, who is an expert on computers, he told me that the motherboard crashed—and I burned. And as if that wasn’t enough, our cable was disconnected, and there are only two channels accessible on it—TV5 and GMA7.

So there was the denial, as I tried and tried..and tried to turn my laptop on. And there was anger, I didn’t come home for three weeks. I bargained to trade, my neighbor’s noisy dog for my laptop, I would gladly perform a sacrificial ritual (barking at no one at 4 am! Sheesh! And I sleep at 3!). I was depressed for 10 long long..hours. Pretty short time to be depressed right? Well I had to get real, I need to focus on my review. And alas was acceptance, I have accepted the fact that I can no longer savor the privileges I had before, mouth-watering cable TV, luscious and crisp DSL connection, heaven on earth.

I just wired my brain into thinking that all that was meant to tell me that I really need to study for the board exam. And true enough, my sacrifices paid off.
Thankfully, I was able to backup half of my arm, or files. It’s quite goosebumps-generating to think that despite the crash, my cousin was able to recover most of the contents of my hard disk. This wasn’t the first time that it crashed, which is why I learned how to backup files—the hard way. And surprisingly, I’m on my way to recovery. It almost seem like the crash was really intended to be just a sign and not something that will destroy what I’ve lived for in my whole stint in the FEU Advocate.

By far, the greatest damage that that misfortune had caused is the stagnancy of my blog. For almost four months now, my blog hasn’t moved an inch. No updates whatsoever. But I intend to change that now. I will be starting a mission, Mission 347, 3 updates 4 7 days or 3 updates per week. I will be posting published Advocate articles, if I find them, my columns, and a whole new lot of topics which are not too personal anymore. I think I have done enough of that now. In any case, Mission 347 (I got the idea from www.aubreythinksthat.blogspot.com) is a go.