Lost Jump Drive

They go by lots of names: jump, flash, or thumb drives. They are easy to use, store a ton of writing, or whatever else you need them to, and they are tiny enough to carry around wherever you go. In your purse.

Tiny enough to lose. Like I did tonight.

I have a ton of writing on my little gizmo. All of my current projects and drafts. Yes, I also back up all my writing on the hard drive of my computers and email myself current drafts to two personal email accounts as an added precaution. I have the projects I'm working on, and even ones that are on the metaphorical shelf, saved. So what then is the problem?

Well, on that jump drive I kept about 10 years worth of work, and not all of it was password protected. Lost. Out there on the cement somewhere, about to be run over by a bus, tucked in a corner forgotten, or even worse...somebody is reading my stuff right now this very minute before it's submission ready. Raw writing. Crappy drafts. Hundreds of them. God help me, but it's a feeling that will make you sick to your stomach. (The journals were password protected; at least I had enough sense to do that, hallelujah!)

I've called both Cafe Zoka's and the little grocery story where I bought some soup to see if anyone turned in my thumb drive. Tomorrow I will visit the cafe, the grocery, and walk the same way home to see if somehow my personal jump drive jumped out of my purse or my pocket along the way.

Learn from my mistake: if you store your writing on jump drive, please do the following:

1. Password protect all the files that you don't want some stranger, rightly curious maybe or bored silly, to read.
2. Email yourself copies of your work and save in multiple locations.
3. Label your drive with your name and cell phone number.

P.S.
And if you see my jump drive (pictured above) somewhere in Seattle, can let me know?