I hadn’t cleaned up my hard disks in over 3 years. I hadn’t put any kind of effort in trying to organize my downloaded and created data. I had four “Downloads” folders, all moved around when their size had filled their respective disks up like oversized dinners, three “Torrents” folders similar to 3 overflowing buckets under a leaky roof, various backup and transfer folders I hadn’t even touched since I had created them…
What a mess.
I’ll have you know I used to be very anal about the organization of my folders. Somewhere along the way this changed, along with too many other things to count. I think the fact that I’ve lost about 4 hard disks worth of data, some of it easily replaceable, some of it unique, helped me get over the illusion that digital organization can in any way be meaningful or productive, if meant for long-term archiving. After years of having the impression that whatever I put into little digital boxes would stay there, at some point I stopped thinking that any of this mattered. I started organising my data the way I do in the physical world: not by association and relevance, but by chronological order. Folders became little photographs of my past downloading activity, clumped together like mushrooms under trees. Trees whose branch would have months, periods, important events and other flashbulb markers of time carved on their barks.
Suddenly then came Dafni and had a look at the mess I realised that by having 15 folders with downloaded music not propertly filed and organised, I only made it harder for me. When would the day come, when the “New Music” folder would join the ranks of my older music? Was it really new anymore after having sat there for more than 2 years?
I emptied my cardboard boxes. I threw them out. As much as I didn’t feel 100% comfortable with it, I put my newer data together with my old. I’ve crossed the Rubicon. I’ve pulled down the Wall. Now I have 200GBs free, all of my music is in the same place and a collection of movies I had forgot I had downloaded. It’s like suddenly discovering many pimples in the same place, eagerly waiting to be popped, or being returned many books at the same time you never remembered you had lent out.
Not bad.
