Skunked

Bye Bye Butterfly, by Catrin Welz-Stein

I've been beating myself up this week, for making a dumb rookie mistake at MOHAI on Tuesday.  I was having a great time with the two other librarians, putting finishing touches on a finding aid I've been working on for months.

We had old Seattle business directories spread out, Internet searches going and other fun stuff pulled from the archive to help identify a series of old photographs. It was the most enjoyable primary research ever! The puzzle slowly sorted out, and I dutifully entered the new facts in my Excel spreadsheet as we went along.

And then...somehow, inexplicably...I didn't remember to SAVE CHANGES when I closed out my laptop for the day.  Bye, bye butterfly.  An afternoon of work gone. And not just my work.

Well, I'm not the first or last person to get skunked by Microsoft software. Was I just day-dreaming that Excel might have the common sense to auto-save my work?

More likely, I just wasn't in the present moment at that particular moment.  My new subscription to Mindful Magazine hasn't kicked in yet. Anyway, in front of my smart friends, I felt like Nova after she eats a licorice ice cream cone!

Well, I'll fill in the spreadsheet again next week. Facts found once can be found again, easily enough. As John said, in 100 years, who cares? I don't think I mentioned in July that MOHAI gave me their award for "library volunteer of the year" which was such nice recognition for three years of work. So I probably won't get fired :-)

There's a website I like called Tiny Buddha.  Since all of us sometimes forget to click the SAVE button, you might also enjoy this little article: "Overcoming Perfectionism, The Joy of Just OK."