That’s how I described myself in a Facebook post status update on the long journey from Europe back to Hawaii.

On Saturday morning, I woke up at 6:00 am to repack my backpack and suitcase, which at 22 kilos was dangerously close to being overweight (23 kilos are the limit!) My flight was not until noon, so I ate a leisurely English breakfast, and schlepped my too unwieldy baggage from my hotel in Terminal 4 to the international Terminal 2—no short distance if you are familiar with Heathrow Airport. (Every trip I swear I am not going to overpack, but jeepers. I was on the road for six weeks and wore everything I had packed for my journey.)

The flight from London to San Francisco was approximately 11 hours long, and though I was seated in an exit row with plenty of leg space, my head was unfortunately next to a protruding file holder containing the safety card and inflight magazines. On the other side I was sitting next to a very large, 6’4″ man who took up more than his share of personal space but probably felt more uncomfortable than I was!

It was during my three hour layover at the San Francisco airport that I checked my email and Facebook feed that I learned of the sudden death of organist and church musician Erik Floan, 48 years old. This was truly shocking news—people at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu may remember Erik was a frequent visitor to Hawaii and substituted as organist and choirmaster on one of our vacations. He also came with several of his parishioners to both of our Mass in B minor concerts in 2011.

Another 5 hours to Hawaii and I walked in my front door about 10:45 pm HST, which was nearly noon in London! Having absolutely no sleep on the London to San Francisco leg and scarcely closing my eyes to Hawaii made me a zombie at best!

But it was a very short night—I woke up about 4 am and was sitting at the organ at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church by 6:45 am, where I played the 8:00 am Matins and 10:00 am Eucharist. I crashed for a little nap before groggily getting up to play for Evensong and Benediction in the afternoon.

On Monday morning when I woke up at 2:54 am, I turned on my computer and was horrified to see that my Documents folder could not be found! I then checked my iCloud account (which backs up my data to the Cloud) and was terrified to see the message: “This directory has no files!”

I checked my Carbonite account, which also backs up my data, and at first glance, I could not locate my files and was presented with the ominous message that the last backup occurred on June 15, 2018. After failing to find my files for Early Music Hawaii (since I have to design a postcard for their next concert) or the files for my condo’s newsletter, which I have to write and produce in the next week, I panicked and tried to go back to sleep with absolutely no luck.

I was thinking that all my computer files were gone—almost 30 years of work for the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, programs, press releases, the history book for the first 100 years which I laid out, graphic and logo files for Early Music Hawaii brochures and postcards, music for Ionian Arts, files for the American Guild of Organists, in short, my entire life—the possibility of it all being gone in one fell swoop was overwhelming.

I knew what I had done—while I was on the road, I received messages that I had reached the limit for both my iCloud and Gmail accounts under my present subscription plans. So I deleted the files in Documents folder, thinking they would be safe on my computer at home since it was turned off. Unfortunately as soon as I turned it on, it synced to my online account, in which I had deleted the Documents folder!

I had already resigned myself to creating everything from scratch, but then …

I had a 9:00 am appointment with my retina specialist for my monthly and now very overdue eye injection for my wet AMD (age-related macular degeneration). I kept thinking of the June 15 backup, which contained 89 GB of files—surely my documents were there somewhere! Since I had left Hawaii on June 26, most of my work should be intact.

Indeed after some searching I was relieved to find my files just fine and started the laborious task of restoring almost 2 million files! (1,767,677 to be exact). It has now been over 24 hours since I started the restore process and is only about 25% completed, which means I am back to writing my blog using my phone.

Surely I must be a glutton for punishment!