Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Wednesday, June 18, 2003

 

Uncle Bill's Helicopter, redux


I get choked up about how much good blogging has done me. I think that the more people that put part of themselves in Cyberspace, the happier all of us will be.

My case is an extreme one, I'll admit. Everything I wrote between 1984 and 1988 was lost in a disk crash. 5 years of journal, several dozen stories, some unique software and two books in progress were stolen with my computer and backup tapes - Christmas day, 1993.

After that, I stopped writing. The trauma of losing everything - absolutely everything - scarred me deeply. I wrote pieces here and there, and tons of email, and I worked really hard on everything but writing. I stopped journaling. I have been executing - not thinking - on a program I laid down for myself to run 10 years ago. That program's got kind of crufty and old.

Some days I think I spent these years building the internet - and not using it - because my limbic system wanted me to have a really good backup system before it would let me invest time in writing again. I'm happy about blogging - because somebody else makes the backups. Memories of a brighter day are always clearer with my blog nearby.

Sometimes I forget what I wrote and need to be reminded. In Uncle Bill's Helicopter Version 2, published this month in the Kudzu Monthly , I'd spoken about the problems I had when I wrote first version of the speech:

I blogged the problem on the internet... and we found josh! And - I got what I needed to get up, pull myself out of my personal crater, and keep on breathing. All the people out there willing to help - restored my faith in my profession and in other people.

I spoke about some of the lessons I'd learned about how to get up in the morning, when you're stuck under a 14,000 pound pillow:



and concluded:



Now - for months that bird hasn't flown for me, I still have a third and fourth part of Josh's story left to write. But until I read the speech just now - I'd forgotten that we all can come back from making terrible mistakes.

I know that the story of Uncle Bill's Helicopter has flown for others, piloted by their own heroes with angels in the rescue chair.

Today, I can hear dozens of helicopters, circling around my personal crater, and thousands more now fly on rescue missions throughout the world - piloted by you, the Reader, and you, the Writer.

I know that we gotta keep on trying, and we gotta keep on flying.
 
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David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


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