"Lost" a Valuable Post... Thoughts on Dealing With Frustration and Cultivating Patience
If you've been using the Internet longer than about three days, I'm sure you've experienced something like this:
Summer storm rising over Flathead Lake, Montana
You're on a favorite web site (could be Steemit!), something somewhere catches your imagination, and all of a suddenly you're frenziedly typing out an insightful screed-- could be a whole new blog post, could be a long and detailed response you feel (at least in that moment) could "change the course of history."
Or, at least, lives of the people who might read it.
Whatever your thoughts might be, you're clearly quite "invested" in what you've created.
Internet Shenanigans, Fluff, Fuzz and.... User Error!
So this morning, I had a really good head of steem(!) going on the topic of ethics and the current "hot topic" of "abusive comment self-upvoting."
Re-read it, proofed it, added images, formatted it, added tags, double checked... and then the dog needed out.
Wild asters in bloom
So I took the dog out, came back 10 minutes later... and clicked "POST..."
... and a couple of hours' worth of effort vanished into thin air.
I was looking at the "new" feed as usual, but my post was nowhere in sight. When I went back to "Submit a Story," it was gone from the buffer. I logged out and logged in (perhaps a mistake) but still nothing, and not listed on my page. I even checked steemd (as close as you can get to a personal blockchain viewer without getting uber technical) and there was no record of a "transaction" corresponding to my post.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Much as I felt tempted to "point fingers" at something and toss out some choice curses... this was ultimately "user error."
With 25 years of web experience, I should have known by now that-- bursts of sudden creative enthusiasm notwithstanding-- the appropriate way to post is to write it out using a 3rd party client with autosave. Did I do that? No. My bad.
Choices have consequences.
How Do We Deal With Frustrations and Letdowns?
Walking on a quiet path...
This post, however, is neither intended as a potential "bug report," nor as my wanting to have a pity party for a lost idea... instead, it's about exploring how we handle frustration, letdowns and setbacks.
Some people seem able to just go "oh shit, that SUCKS!" and then are able to turn around and reproduce what was lost in a matter of a very short time. I really admire that. But it has never been me.
My response: Losing my work-- basically about two hours' worth of effort-- pretty much took the wind out of my "creative sails." I walked away and went off to make breakfast and do other things.
As I stood in the kitchen, I realized that has pretty much been my reaction-- for better or for worse-- to setbacks for most of my adult life. On a few rare occasions, I will keep the energy level going, but I will put my creative effort into doing something completely different... the idea of rehashing something already created and lost? It just annoys me... and I know that annoyance will show through, if I attempt a re-do.
How about YOU? How do you respond to a setback that means you just lost a bunch of effort? Do you re-do? Do you quit? Do you feel inclined to "throw things," or are you more patient and philosophical? Leave a comment-- share your experiences and feedback-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Published 20170705 15:04 PDT
Perfect!
I can understand the frustration when you loose two hours work.
I lost some comments in the past. But since I read of people losing posts, I copy the whole thing and put it in a word document. Not always but if they are longer post with a lot of work I do that.
I'm patient when I have setbacks, or when I have to do things over.
It is the way it is. If I would carry the frustration with me while doing it over it would take me longer, because working with frustration causes more setbacks and mistake, and than it takes much much longer for me to finish it.
Beautiful photos as always :)
I guess I am "selectively patient."
Lawnmower breaks? No biggie. Flight late? No biggie. Flat tire? No biggie. Things I have to do for work screwing up? Deal with it pretty well.
But when I lose something "creative," it always feels like a "one time shot" and it's just gone. Which is-- of course-- nonsense, from a purely functional standpoint.
Aha, I get what you mean now and I recognize it. I'm a bit slow sometimes lol.
I lost some comments yesterday and am very frustrated - was such a well thought comment i put in hours - poor me. Then I told me self - Fuck it - do it a gain whiner.
Great post buddy!
Thanks @uwelang! I usually get over myself pretty quickly... and I shalt not whine any further.
Or, as my wife is fond of saying: "Would you like some peanuts with your whine?"
I know that feeling exactly. 😠 I have lost a couple of what I thought were brilliant pieces...and no matter how much I tried, could not replicate them to my bitter disappointment. But then at later time I had a thought that maybe they weren't really meant to be shared.
That may not be the case with yours.
I think the worst thing that has happened to me writing-wise is a screenplay that I was writing disappeared when my last pc was infected with a virus along with a string of poems, and a script. I have just felt that I could never recreate them and at times still mourn their loss.
I try to be philosophical about it... and I accept that "maybe it wasn't meant to be" once I've chilled out and gotten over myself.
I'm still holding on to an old crashed hard drive that has the better part of three books on it along with a multitude of short stories and a dozen further book outlines. "One of these days," I'm going to send it off to one of those expert data recovery services that basically do "data forensics." I just need to feel in the mood to spend about $800....
I guess I've been lucky, I have a bunch of half dead hard drives that I've replaced at the first sign of trouble but I've never lost any data. I've been getting somewhat lax about my backups though.
I've had a bunch of setbacks where I've spent months of effort only to bag a project and not promote it or complete it. I think it is kind of a learning experience. Crypto has been a better outcome for me than many other things I've tried.
Sounds like you have managed to keep a couple of steps ahead of trouble-- congratulations on that! I typically do pretty well backing up stuff... it's more the "autosaving" on things I'm working on right now that I sometimes forget.
That is terrible when we lost our works that we have made for several hours. It is depend what an importance my works. If that so important, I must do it again from beginning. Nice posting! :)
On the ones that really meant something to me, I usually go back (a couple of days later) and try to complete a rewrite. Otherwise... it just wasn't supposed to happen.
Well that more than sucks! I feel your pain on that. I have had hard drive crashes back in the day that wiped out weeks of animation work I was doing.
Last week I did have a similar thing happen to me here on Steemit, but it was just for a comment, not comparing to your efforts. I posted the comment, saw the comment, then 2 minutes later the author came back and replied to one of my posts to say that when she went to reply to my comment it gave an error that I was not a valid username. Then the post just disappeared. Nothing in the transaction records either. So I guess the chain must glitch every so often.
Thanks!
I really have no idea what happened... but I suspect I missed one of those little "communication error" messages that comes up once in a great while.
I should know better... I've gotten to feel rather "safe" with posting on Steemit because everything is autosaved and you can usually go back to the input box and whatever was there last will still be there. This time, not so much. Typically, I write the bulk of my posts using an online email client... that way I can access whatever drafts I have from any one of my laptops or desktops without having to network anything.
True. I have started writing my posts in Word so I can save first and get a better sense of what I'm writing now that I am starting to put together more involved posts.
I do hope you are able to collect your thoughts on the lost post so you can share it with us when you can.
I see your pic of Flathead lake. I'm staying not too far from there in North Idaho, very near Sandpoint.
Yes, I've lost a post or two. I've learned ( so I think ) to compose on Word or something similar so that it is always backed up.
STEEM ON!
Yeah, I know Sandpoint... sort of... been through a couple of times.
I usually use-- of all things-- gmail online. That way I can compose... and open my drafts from any computer or email accessible device, anywhere.
for sure, I re-do it and re-do it better than it was initially.
When I worked as a software developer I just didn't have a luxury just went away and forget about. I needed to code something and it didn't matter if i lost something or not.
I can guess all me recreations are better than initial attempts, because I already investigated all necessary things, I already know all shortcuts and knowhow to do it better and faster. And I have time and power to add more to an initial plan
I do remember in the really old days of coding, I would usually do better on the re-write... and since I was "working for someone," abandoning what I was doing was really not an option.
In this case, I could probably have redone in about an hour or less-- I had the pictures and the outline. Maybe I'll get it back tomorrow...