Losing a Part of You
Sometimes you have a loss, the profundity of which makes you feel vulnerable. That happened to me last night. It is actually through a large part of my stupidity that I not only had this loss occur, but also feel it so sharply. In case you are wondering, far be it from me to drag this thing out further, I lost my USB drive. At the moment a lot of you will scoff. "This is hardly noteworthy", you would say. I however have to disagree. The loss of a USB drive can have little pain, but the loss of a USB drive filled with work and documents is a loss most profound. The reason is simple, work, much like education, is an extension of the self. When a portion of this is taken away the loss is further punctuated.
So how did I lose my USB drive? In the stupidest of ways... While walking home I was talking to Sean, I reached into my pocket to pull out my headphones and I must have unwittingly dropped the drive out of my pocket at that point. To be honest, I am not very sure that is how it happened, but it seems the most plausible explanation. I could have also dropped it while grabbing for my keys when I got home, but for some reason the former feels more plausible. So my USB drive is lost and you can of course ask me what was on it. Every single document from 1998 to now, to be precise. Stuff from high school, college and my graduate years. Megabytes of Photoshop mockups and the resulting HTML mockups as well were stowed away. They were all neatly arranged in eight folders and now they are all lost. Notes were on there too... Everything from Anthropology to Sociology courses. Anyone who grabs that and opens it will have some excellent papers to submit to a handful of classes. They will also have a Master's thesis, all prepped and ready. The loss still stings, but there is another reason why.
On the drive are a few sensitive documents and some very private information. Now that has fallen into the hands of someone. It is my hope that the drive was crushed underneath something and thus obliterated. However, I have to fear the, very likely, possibility that it is in someone's hands instead. These things have a password put on them and hopefully that should take care of prying eyes. Yet, my mind is far from at ease. The entire notion of this information just lying out there is unnerving at best. Calls to "Campus Safety" were returned with a kurt message of "Sorry, but we only really keep track of valuable things." Unfortunately though this person and his pejorative statement do not seem to understand that this is now of extreme value to me.
It is odd too how something can rise in value almost monumentally in a day. A week ago I would have said that USB drive was important, but of negligible important on the grand scale of things. Now, with its loss, it has risen monumentally in value. At work I am surprised as to how I can go on without it. At home I still survive... Mostly though I just can't overcome this feeling of loss and violation. It is at no one's hands, but it still feels like a violation. I suppose the violation is a matter of perception, as I think of what someone could do with that disk in hand... The entire thing crawls across my skin. There is no way this thing is salvageable, but hopefully I learn from my stupidity. The most important thing is to divest my personal information from the USB drive and maybe even include a "Lost" note on the drive. I can learn many things from this experience. Yet, the knowledge of that is not going to make any of this palatable.
