This evening I logged onto an old web account and cruised through the files there. I found old photos, old writings, perl scripts, flash movies. Generally stuff that I’d forgotten about. I tend to be a hoarder. I find it difficult to get rid of things because I enjoy the memories that they bring. I also have an irrational paranoia about needing something just after I’ve thrown it out.

About a year ago I lost a whole bunch of data from my past. My then flat-mate was storing the data on one of his servers, which unfortunately suffered a crash. The data was lost. Having it on this server was my idea of a backup. Maybe not a backup, but an archive. Anyway, it was gone. I was philosophical about it at the time. There was really nothing there that I had needed to reference in quite some time, so it wasn’t really a practical loss, merely a sentimental one.

This evening (more than a year on) I remembered something else that was on that disc that I would have liked to have kept. Not because I needed it for anything, but simply because it’s pleasurable to have. I guess this is how people feel after their house is damaged by fire or flood and they lose all the photographs they’ve taken over the years. It’s not that the photos are important for anything, but that they mean a lot to us. They serve as triggers for the memory. Memories are important.

What I lost was not photographs, but about 250 poems that I’d written as a teenager. You know the sort, really crappy angst-ridden teen poems. It’s not that they were good – they certainly were not. But they were my creative output in an important time of my life. I’d really really like them back. But they’re gone. Forever.