Tell your stories!

My computer is really important to me. I’m a writer so everything is on there. I’ve always been a heavy user of laptops.

I go through them fairly regularly – every couple of years, every year if I have been careless.

This involves transferring data from one computer to another, and that can be a challenge.

Now, I have a service called Carbonite, but before I did all the data migration manually. I’d put it on a disc to take it from one computer to another. I’ve probably transferred data a dozen times over the years.

Each time I do it, I assure myself, “I’ve got this stuff. It’s gonna be there when I need it. I’ll know how to find it and it will be there for posterity.”

The other day, I went to open one file that I had transferred multiple times. It was a file that was very important to me called STORIES and in there I had been keeping beginnings of stories, starters for pieces I wanted to write – all the things I was going to get to.

So I opened up the STORIES file and it was empty – completely empty.

Here I had been transferring this file from computer to computer for a good decade, waiting for when I had time to dive into the folder and work with the stories and massage them and make them beautiful.

But they were gone.

That really struck me.

What things – ideas, aspirations, plans – am I carrying around that I haven’t opened? What beauty have I neglected that may not be there by the time I get around to it?

My computer is important to me. My stories are important to me. But more important than anything else is DOING the things we think we want to do – the things we think will bring us joy or add beauty to our lives.

Get them done!

You don’t want to open that file of stories and find it is empty.

Do it. No regrets.