how often do i back up? not very often actually as the laptop works so why do i need to back it up? i do back up the files that go to make the current in progress work. so what about all the stuff on the hard drive ?
i’ve asked the question this week as i have an opportunity to upgrade to the latest os to take advantage of the apps that a newly arrived piece of hardware will connect to.
i’ve looked over the contents of the hard disc and see that there are files going back to the inception of my relationship. how much hard disc space is used by all that? do i need it all? what to keep?
i was amazed to discover on the machine there is over 17gb of images. how many of those do i regularly use i thought.
time to slow down. time to edit the contents of the hard drive. time to make disc back ups and delete the originals. time to reflect on things done and to see that the future doesn’t have to have everything carried forward with me.
i am a natural horder. i have school books from my teenage years. boxes of them. boxes of files from my drama college days and my national youth theatre seasons, my weekly rep days too.
so why have i horded it all?
consciously i saw no reason to throw it all away.
subconsciously i believe hording to be connected to a sense of something missing. i believe this because of a television programme about horders attempting to let go of all that is horded. i am by no means at the level of keeping bags of rubbish. oh no i’m very adept at throwing the bags of rubbish away even to the point of going through the general rubbish bag removing the plastic and all things recyclable.
i wonder if the keeping of things has been to do with wanting to discover who i am. there being some point in time where i will be able to realise. how do i know if that time will come? is it an all the time event?
this sense of knowing who i am permeates it’s way into my online persona. well wanting to know who i am and how i communicate that comes into how i approach my online persona.
i’ve considered the relationship between my online self and my physical self. if i place something on line does it have less meaning than if if were a physical thing in a space that such physical things are looked at and admired for their meaning because of the actions placed upon it to get it there.
paradoxically i often think that i haven’t understood all the talk about a critical discussion within my practice. i grew up where a critical discussion was a close adult telling me what to do because i wasn’t doing it and i should. oh the joy to realise that critical discourse is just the ideas being talked about and being reflected upon.
so in freeing up space on the hard drive and placing the discs in a drawer, what process am i going through? well it appears that i’m doing something that has previously not been on the concious agenda. scale springs to mind now.
i am getting a pleasing feeling in burning each disc and having slowed down have the space to write something here. i am becoming a fan of slowing down.
i am also seeing the advantage of having a critical discourse at the centre of my practice. my view of it today is that i can communicate the boundaries to which comers to view will stand inside.
my current inability to state what the critical aspect of my practice is leaves the field wide open and consequently seems to offer too much range to be interesting.
so my challenge becomes how to find the boundaries that afford comers to the works to feel safe and still afford me the creative space to flit and explore and have fun?
