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Wednesday, 1 January 2020

EIGHT FOLDERS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.


Time to eat eight folders. Then I can say I ate eight folders. The major reorganising of the computer archive was always going to leave loose ends. I look back on that change now and I see eight folders left dangling in the wind. They have their slice of the sub-folder pie, it is true…but I’m down to those eight folders at last.
   Am I, though?
   No. The point of the archive was to duplicate effort here, there, and avoid loss of data. As far as I am aware, in all my time computing, I haven’t lost any major data. I’ll tell this one again, about gaining data. There were files that had to be cut down.

*

It was important to keep the files, with their file names, but data inside those files had to die. I started weeding. Select text. Delete text. Select text. Delete text. The autosave hadn’t kicked in. I worked rapidly. The power went.
   Bzzzt. Except, without that sound.
   I hadn’t saved the file. And the system hadn’t autosaved the file. The only changes made were in data erasure. All those cuts were gone when the power was restored. I faced a power-cut and gained data in the file I worked on. All the erased material waved back at me. I had to delete that stuff again. Careful in what I deleted, I saved as I went.
   This brings up a point of procedure. When generating data, I save regularly. It’s a habit of mine to save every paragraph, and to save mid-paragraph if I feel the need. There are times when I save every sentence. This is not a difficult process. I hit the left CONTROL button and the letter S and the save goes ahead.
   No matter the state of play in terms of sentences or paragraphs, I save if I have to step away from the machine. There’s always an exception, and my exception is data removal. I am cautious in what I delete, and ensure the right thing goes. Later, I’ll save it. Obviously, the power-cut intruded on that routine and here we are with this anecdote all over again.

*

To stress the vital point: save often, and save early. I don’t believe I’ve lost vital data. There are many back-up systems in place. As far as an author is concerned, the best back-up for your work is always going to be publication of it. Write it. Check it for typos. Back it up by putting it out there into the void.
   Tackling eight file folders is a mammoth task. I’m not deleting the information inside those folders. Instead, I am moving things around to sit, neatly, under new signposts. That’s the tricky part. This feels like having moved house. And, having moved house, looking from room to room and seeing packed boxes lying around…hell, that is inevitable. Life-draining. Unavoidable. Part of existence.
   Let’s see how many folders I can face tackling as I write this blog post.

*

These folders are, typically, all sub-folders themselves – falling under the category of archives to 2017. This is clearly a lie, as two of the folders are for 2018 and 2019. I know exactly why I didn’t change the main heading…
   There’s a desktop shortcut leading to these files for my convenience, and to change the folder title is to destroy the link to the shortcut while leaving the shortcut icon mocking me on the desktop. Once I’ve reorganised the lot, the shortcut goes. But not a second before. That way, madness lies.
   Nothing is ever straightforward in the archive. How many empty sub-folders will I encounter across the archive? There’s no way to ever truly know that number. It is one of the last great mysteries of the universe.

*

One coffee and a bit of wrestling with categories later, and the folders are what I’d call manageable. I find myself creating more folders…what a surprise…to deal with the way I categorise things now. Then, there were categories with different names. Ah, simpler times. It’s all about managing signposts.
   A few things defy categorisation. That is what the miscellaneous folder is for. I discover miscellaneous material from 2011, but no folder to house that stuff in. I see that 2011 was a year for quite specific things, and not that many miscellaneous items. Not enough to warrant the building of a mighty folder, back then.
   Now, it is but the work of a few irritable seconds. Though…the new folder is far from mighty. How much deletion is involved? I find a spot of duplication. It would be unutterably strange to find zero duplication. Accept this.
   I find obsolete files that should give pangs on deletion, but I feel nothing. They are, after all, truly obsolete. Other entries give pause for thought, Horatio.
   For there are more things in files than mere data samples. I see and hear people who flitted in and out of my life and work. Some I could call on today and take up conversations where we left off, even at the distance of GASP time. Others wandered into different universes.
   Also, there’s a fucking shocking record of prices in 2011. A few items from back then would be bargains now. If you could get them at all. And other necessities, being necessary, shot up in price with rockets strapped to the tags.

*

My digital archive is as random as are the books on my shelves. I store things where they need to go at the time and under the circumstances. The storage of those things makes sense, then, and makes sense to me now only in the sense that it all made sense then.
   A missing file from 2012 turns up in the 2012 folder. Colour me stunned.
   Only a few seconds of work in it, and the 2013 folder sees its wayward sheep herded into a large miscellaneous pen.
   I’ve written with a miscellaneous pen from time to time. The last time I wrote with an actual physical pen was at the end of 2019. And with a pencil? Oh, the week before that. There are still reasons to scribble things down, away from the digital archive. And, yes, I take notes on the digital archive by pen. Sometimes, it’s the easiest way to fly.
   In the cosmic scale of things, I am approaching another coffee. It’s clear to me that not everything in the archive was in the archive. Now that I’ve eaten eight file folders, noted by year, and deleted the obsolete shortcut leading there, I am certain that…
   Not everything in the archive is in the archive. When a new year unfolds, I’m forced to unpack the months. I keep a folder of sub-folders with the months of the year running numbered 1 to 12, listing the first three letters of each month.
   No, I don’t know why I arranged things that way. I suspect, if pressed on the matter, that this notation is the orphaned remnant of a far earlier computer system. Let me just run a check on something. No, I don’t see what I wasn’t looking for.
   Inside an entirely different system, I used to have aardvark files. Yes, this was purely alphabetical. Priority files went at the start start, with the double aa in aardvark. But that primitive computer system gave way to this primitive computer system, and I don’t truly need aardvark files any longer.

*

As I type this entry, I am minutes into 2020 and already I need to set up a monthly file entry. Generally, I use monthly sub-folders to keep track of communications with people across the year. And people are using the internet to wish me a Happy New Year. I’m buzzing on mints and the notion that the last day of the year was one of the frostier ones in an otherwise mild winter. That thought resides in this file. Soon, it’ll be in a monthly folder.
   Archiving with aardvarks may have ended long ago, but archiving itself never ends. It’s one thing to look forward to 2020, and quite another to actually set the files up to cope with the admin of looking forward into the future of right now, just this minute.
   The feeling haunts me…I should set these damned things up well in advance instead of having a microwaved template that I drop into folders as and when needed. But the point of a template is to have a template just for these moments.
   It’s better to wait around and see who and what I’ll need to set the monthly archives up for. Copying and pasting into every last corner is too much duplication of effort. Even for me.
   I ate the eight errant folders a million years ago, whoosh, and need never concern myself with those loose ends, stowed away as they are. But I’ll always have months in years to deal with. Life is set up that way, and I don’t see any other system coming along to replace the calendar any old time soon.

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