06-12-2018, 03:50 AM
Once again, not technically a DMSI post (or an expectation that anyone reads these), but more of a postscript to my last detour-from-DMSI postcard. My return to SE (post-PTPA) was forcibly halted yesterday, after a week: my decade-old computer gave up the ghost and may have taken its drives with it. 
I may have lost 70+ pages of an in-progress novel, my own musical recordings from the last 25 years, my self-scripted hypnosis/NLP recordings from over a decade ago (one of which helped me escape the worst relationship of my life and resume one of the best -- which I'm still in), over 20 years of self-written software, personal documents, and more. I'm not soliciting pity, although if any of you know how to find a missing superblock on a UFS2 filesystem that isn't 32 or 160, a block suggested by "newfs -N" on a much later OS release, or the result of taking incremental stabs in the dark, I'm open to non-destructive suggestions.
I certainly can't wrap my head around the situation, a week of SE (after over 2 months + P6 fade-out previously spent on it, plus past months spent on ASC, PTPA, SR, over a year on DMSI, etc and 25 years of mind programming) isn't really boosting the confidence levels or optimism, and, if anything, SE's P6 earworms may be muddling my concentration. It's an odd sort of technological grief, and (related to the grief, not the sub) I seem to be experiencing nausea, sleep disruptions, and decreased appetite while mired in the denial stage. I've even paused new habits that were greatly improving my health, all because grief (even premature grief) tends to make punishing yourself feel like an easy way of getting back some kind of control. But there's no control -- just exercising reasonable preparation, decisions, execution, and perseverance to exert influence on making the result (however unpleasant) as pleasant as possible. Then the cards fall where they may.
I know that punishing myself is going to produce a worse outcome (while negatively influencing my future) than overcoming the challenge, if it can be overcome. I know better than to wallow in this, but all of my focus aids were on those drives too. As were my entertainment/distractions/creative outlets. I'd re-download E2, if I didn't think that it would further diffuse my troubleshooting focus with turbulence, not that I'd have anything on which to to play it. I own no handheld players, and this backup computer has no audio support. That's not complaining as much as it is simple fact. I'm currently experiencing silence, which is probably why I'm shouting at the dark in this post.
You could say that this is just another test (rugs have been pulled out from under me all year) to prove that I can recover from this (data or no data) on my own, without those audio aids, but I don't feel clear-headed or rested enough to pass any tests right now, aided or not. You could also say that fear of not being clear-headed is holding me back, but that same lack of clarity is what led to the mechanical failure and what subsequently made that failure even worse than it already was. So I don't see it as fear as much as it being a desire to tackle an unfamiliar problem with (at least) the minimum resources necessary to solve it.
One of my favorite bands will be in town, this week, as will a friend from high school that I haven't seen in 25 years, yet I can't bring myself to be energized through the present difficulties by either. I want to be, but the current circumstances do obscure the future ones. In much the same way as a good day today obscures the end of days that we all eventually meet. Worse still, I'm seeing these good things as additional stressors that distract me from fixing the problem, when they should feel like support to boost my resolve to get through it. The tension between what I know and what I feel (despite knowing) is high.
Either way, my detour-from-DMSI has halted indeterminately, as I can't resume any sub until the computer/audio situation is sorted out.
I may have lost 70+ pages of an in-progress novel, my own musical recordings from the last 25 years, my self-scripted hypnosis/NLP recordings from over a decade ago (one of which helped me escape the worst relationship of my life and resume one of the best -- which I'm still in), over 20 years of self-written software, personal documents, and more. I'm not soliciting pity, although if any of you know how to find a missing superblock on a UFS2 filesystem that isn't 32 or 160, a block suggested by "newfs -N" on a much later OS release, or the result of taking incremental stabs in the dark, I'm open to non-destructive suggestions.
I certainly can't wrap my head around the situation, a week of SE (after over 2 months + P6 fade-out previously spent on it, plus past months spent on ASC, PTPA, SR, over a year on DMSI, etc and 25 years of mind programming) isn't really boosting the confidence levels or optimism, and, if anything, SE's P6 earworms may be muddling my concentration. It's an odd sort of technological grief, and (related to the grief, not the sub) I seem to be experiencing nausea, sleep disruptions, and decreased appetite while mired in the denial stage. I've even paused new habits that were greatly improving my health, all because grief (even premature grief) tends to make punishing yourself feel like an easy way of getting back some kind of control. But there's no control -- just exercising reasonable preparation, decisions, execution, and perseverance to exert influence on making the result (however unpleasant) as pleasant as possible. Then the cards fall where they may.
I know that punishing myself is going to produce a worse outcome (while negatively influencing my future) than overcoming the challenge, if it can be overcome. I know better than to wallow in this, but all of my focus aids were on those drives too. As were my entertainment/distractions/creative outlets. I'd re-download E2, if I didn't think that it would further diffuse my troubleshooting focus with turbulence, not that I'd have anything on which to to play it. I own no handheld players, and this backup computer has no audio support. That's not complaining as much as it is simple fact. I'm currently experiencing silence, which is probably why I'm shouting at the dark in this post.
You could say that this is just another test (rugs have been pulled out from under me all year) to prove that I can recover from this (data or no data) on my own, without those audio aids, but I don't feel clear-headed or rested enough to pass any tests right now, aided or not. You could also say that fear of not being clear-headed is holding me back, but that same lack of clarity is what led to the mechanical failure and what subsequently made that failure even worse than it already was. So I don't see it as fear as much as it being a desire to tackle an unfamiliar problem with (at least) the minimum resources necessary to solve it.
One of my favorite bands will be in town, this week, as will a friend from high school that I haven't seen in 25 years, yet I can't bring myself to be energized through the present difficulties by either. I want to be, but the current circumstances do obscure the future ones. In much the same way as a good day today obscures the end of days that we all eventually meet. Worse still, I'm seeing these good things as additional stressors that distract me from fixing the problem, when they should feel like support to boost my resolve to get through it. The tension between what I know and what I feel (despite knowing) is high.
Either way, my detour-from-DMSI has halted indeterminately, as I can't resume any sub until the computer/audio situation is sorted out.
