When Things Go from Bad to Worse

A new semester means new courses.

 I was pretty excited that a new course of mine was all about writing.

Now you’d think that I would have this one in the bag, right?

I have a blog; I write all the time…should be easy, shouldn’t it?

Well, I’m learning that that’s not actually the case.

Let me explain.

Coincidentally, my first writing assignment was a blog.

My first thought was: YES! I KNOW WHAT A BLOG IS!

But I soon found out that what I normally blog about (i.e. random things that happen to me) are not very…academic.

And this assignment was supposed to be.

I had to write a critical annotated bibliography in the form of a blog about an article written by Stephen King.

So…a bit more complicated and formal than what I’m used to.

For this reason, as soon as I sat down to write, I felt the pressure.

Why, you ask?

Well, it was supposed to be short and succinct, coherent and easy to read. I needed to make good points and get them across in a manner that made sense, and was brief.

Sounds easy, but it’s kind of a tall order.

I kept telling myself that this shouldn’t be a difficult assignment.

I kept repeating in my head: this should be easy, this should be easy, this should be easy…

 …until there came a point when I admitted that it wasn’t actually that easy.

I was totally overthinking it.

And you know what that means: writer’s block was beginning to set in.

But I powered through it.

I had a draft (albeit a fairly rough one) finished, and I was feeling better about the whole situation.  

 That is, until the whole situation changed.

 

Yes, that’s a picture of a blank word document.

I somehow deleted my almost finished blog.

 

How, you ask?

Well, I highlighted and cut the few paragraphs of my rough blog in order to paste them into a template that the prof had provided. But after cutting and before pasting, I (for some reason) decided to copy a file from my documents and paste it on my desktop.

So, when I went to paste my blog, of course the only thing that got pasted was the name of that file that distracted me.

And so I cut my own blog, and couldn’t get it to come back.

The worst part was that it was late at night the day before the assignment was due (as per usual for a procrastinator such as myself) and I had to start all over again.

I was extremely frustrated.

I sat staring at my laptop screen for a solid 5 minutes begging my blog to come back to me.

 

 

But once that 5 minutes was up and my grieving process was over, I began writing again.

Just like before, I powered through it and got the thing done.

Moral of the story?

Always COPY, don’t CUT.

It’s just safer.