Back It Up, Girlfriend!

By, Beth Jarrott

My goal was to join the blogosphere by March of 2014. For months I’d been researching, writing and editing a month’s worth of posts before launching my blog. I even bought Blogging for Dummies.

 The day of launching my blog finally arrived.

I bounced upstairs and fired up my laptop, clicked on the folder labeled “First Month’s Blog”  and for whatever reason, I decided to change its name. Only instead of clicking “Rename,” I clicked “Delete!”

No. No. This can’t be happening!

I remembered the Recycle Bin.

 Yay!

I popped it open only to discover that it had been disabled. Apparently when I bought my laptop a year ago, the person who installed the software didn’t think the Recycle Bin necessary and disabled it.

At that moment  I remembered the episode of Sex In The City where Carrie Bradshaw’s beloved laptop crashed. (I think it’s the only entire episode of Sex In The City I've ever watched) She, too, was a writer. She rushed her laptop to some computer geek only to hear, “It’s not looking good. Did you back it up?”

 “Back it up?” She yells. “No! I didn’t back it up!”

 Panic-stricken like Carrie Bradshaw, I drove my laptop to the nearest computer repair shop.

 God can make a way where there seems to be no way, I kept breathing.

 The computer whiz asked me, “Did you backup your stuff?”

 If I had backed it up, I wouldn't be here!

He ran two recovery programs through my computer, to no avail. Since the Recycle Bin had been disabled, my laptop obliterated the file. All my hard work vanished, with one simple click. I wanted to cry.

Unlike Carrie Bradshaw, comforted only by her Louboutin, lacquered red soles; I drew comfort from the Savior of my soul.

I was now tasked with rewriting a month’s worth of posts.

I wanted to give up.

But fellow Word Weavers  prayed for me.They prayed that my rewrites would surpass the original ones.

As I started over, I remembered reading Franklin Graham’s book, Rebel With A Cause. In it he shared how his wife, Jane Austin, had accidentally deleted an entire book he had written. He immediately went into action, and for the next several months he rewrote his book. Consequently, it turned out to be a God thing – the rewrite was better than the original he said.

On April 1^st, 2014, I finally launched my blog My Encore Life of Raising My Grandchildren. (click on link)

Like Franklin Graham, I liked my rewrite even better. God doesn't waste anything.

Backing Up Your Stuff!

Typically, I backup my stuff. I really do! Except for about a month, I wasn't backing up anything. I was so focused on writing, I simply forgot.

We buy insurance for our homes, cars, boats, businesses and more. We need to think of backups as data insurance.There are a plethora of programs to backup data (saving information to other sources). For example: Google Cloud, Skydrive, Carbonite, a flash drive, or simply saving your documents to an email folder.

 And girlfriend, you can bet Carrie Bradshaw’s designer shoes, I’ll be backing up my prose from here on! 

How about you, are you backing up your stuff?

Beth Jarrott is a native of Wilmington, North Carolina, where she lives an Encore Life  with her husband, Tom, and their two granddaughters, Grace and Bella. For over a decade she traveled throughout North Carolina providing self-esteem programs in youth prisons, detention centers and training schools. She is also a writer, speaker, lover of Jesus, and in the summer months she can often be found dipping her toes into the great Atlantic Ocean. Visit her blog: My Encore Life of Raising myGrandchildren. (click on link)