Lessons from a Careless Learner

It happened today. My hubby has been issuing me with dire warnings for quite some time. "I don't know why you use xxx email to save your stuff. You'll lose it all one day!" And so I did. I lost absolutely everything. It was all kept under my "Drafts" section in my email account. My links to give to Primary school teachers I will be teaching in exactly 2 weeks time. Lots of cool sites I have earmarked over the past months to condense into one "Really Useful List" to give as a handout. Well, now I am in a "slight bit of trouble" as there aren't many days left to rebuild what I have lost. Understatement is pricelessly and uniquely British, and here is a lovely link to Vicky Hollet's "British Understatement" post on her "Learning to Speak 'merican" blog.

Gone With The WindHow did I cope with my spot of bother? I tweeted about it to get it off my chest. This is what I wrote:

1. Just accidentally deleted ALL my bookmarks for favourite sites/links kept on my email.very silly! Out of disaster, have now set up a wiki

2. Ignored dire warnings of hubby saying "you shouldn't keep things there!"so now have
hours of xtra work trying to remember all the cool links.

An immediate response came from @JoHart who helpfully offered some sympathy and practical advice. I will have to look into delic.io.us as she so kindly suggested. Luckily, I do have some bookmarks saved under "Bookmarks" and also in diigo, but they are in different places, as opposed to all in one convenient bunch. You may ask, but surely Janet had a back-up system in place? Surely she has saved a copy elsewhere? The answer is NO, I had meant to copy them all into Word, but somehow I had never got round to doing it. The proverb "A stitch in time saves nine" has never rung truer than now. Anyway, it's no use crying over spilt milk and so what is done is done. I have to live and learn!

The second thing I did to cool down and ponder on my "technical mishap" was to attack the grass cuttings with renewed vigour. Aided and abetted by chickens, cats and dogs, I was able to continue building a huge compost heap. I intend to sit right on top of it, like I did last year. This might make me feel better. There's nothing to beat sitting on "top of the world", so to speak.

The third thing which made me take my mind off the delicate state of technical affairs was to accept the offer of writing another book review for packtpub. I enjoy writing book reviews and feel pleased that I have been invited to do more.

The fourth thing I did was to sign up for wikispaces. I had been meaning to transfer all my lists into one place where I could add stuff as I came across them. So that is done now and I guess this is a very positive step for me. I have not really had much to do with wikis since my excellent wikis course with The Consultants-e and it's about time I really looked into them and started using them.

The fifth thing I did was to make a nice pot of tea and sit on my elephant bench and just look at the beautiful view in front of me. Like Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone with the Wind, "Tomorrow is another day."

K busy cutting the grass earlier today

Chickens gleefully jumping into my carefully laid out mounds of grass cuttings and wreaking havoc! You can catch a glimpse of the jungle in the background.