So I jumped out of bed at 5:30 AM and was ready to tackle anything... except the Blue Screen of Death.I was lucky - I end up working on two different computers frequently so I do 99% of my work off of Dropbox so I always have the latest version of everything no matter where I am. Before I was a cloud girl, though, I worked out of local copies on my desktop which I'd occasionally think to back up to a thumb drive, or maybe email to myself to "back up." If I was still that version of Ashley - that naive, trusting, and gullible girl - I'd have been screwed today. Here's a small taste of what I could have lost had I not made the move to keep everything in a cloud-based storage folder:
- 4 novel WIPs along with all of the brainstorming notes I've taken and research links I've saved.
- All of the free stock photos I've slowly stockpiled over the years with my one-a-week accounts. We're talking several gigs worth of great marketing images and videos.
- All of my old drafts, saved pearls that I've cut from other books, random ideas, short stories, and poems.
- All of the finance spreadsheets and records I've kept for taxes and other financials.
- All of the music I ripped from my old 90s CDs so I could get rid of the physical media finally. I mean really, who wants to still keep those giant CD books anymore?
- MY MOTHER-FLIPPING WEDDING PHOTOS.
Since I worked out of Dropbox I was able to run to Best Buy, bet the gaming PC I've been eyeing for a few months anyway, and get right back to work. There are still a few mostly image-related items I had stored locally on the laptop that died this morning, so I'll be working on recovery as I have time over the next few weeks. Otherwise instead of calmly buying a new PC this morning, I'd have been in a mad panic - probably still in my pajamas - begging the Geek Squad to save my books and all of my memories like a crazy woman.
So have you guessed yet that today's tale has a moral? It totally does. And that moral is: Back That Sh*% Up.
