There will always be more

Recently, we had some problems with our cable. I thought it was a bad connection or the cable company just getting bad signals. Turns out, it was the machine that was at fault. It, well, went a little nutty. It wasn’t showing titles of shows that were playing, didn’t show the recordings of shows we DVRed despite saying “42% full” and it kept going dark. In the end, it conked out on us and we had to get a new box. The new box works better and everything is working just fine now – except that my daughter panicked after she saw that ALL of the shows she’d DVRed were gone. History.

This reminded me of certain experiences from my past. I’d loaned books out to a certain sibling and I never saw those books again.

And speaking of books, I once lost 10 boxes of books in a move. Ouch!

But that’s not as painful as something else that happened. A virus once infected my computer, wiping out EVERYTHING. Essays, articles, manuscripts, poems and short stories. I even lost a script I was writing! I also lost copies of contracts and invoices for work sold, and the copies of where that stuff appeared online.

I have even lost a whole notebook teeming with over a hundred songs that I wrote!

Ouch, indeed.

But, you know, I picked myself up by my bootstraps and just kept on writing. I dusted myself off, grabbed a pen, and wrote some more. And there was always more. There will always be more – more articles, books, stories and essays. Maybe I’ll even finish the new script I started writing!

I have written more stuff to replace the stuff that was lost. I have also bought more books, and, you know, that's just a little bit of my subconscious trying to replace all those other books that I lost. (Who knows if we are at 10 boxes worth. I haven't really counted those boxes of extra books, but there are a lot.)

The point is, I added more where there was less. And there was more to add. Maybe not the same kind of stuff that was a better replacement, but I DID have more stuff I wanted to write and more books I wanted to own.

Yes. There will be more. You lose things and you replace them. That’s just the way it is.

So as my daughter started to panic and freak out, I gently told her to calm down and said the same thing that got me through those experiences: “There will always be more.” In this case, we’re talking a TV show that airs reruns every day. Chances are pretty good they’ll air the reruns she recorded – or most of them, anyway. There’s always that chance. And this knowledge brought her comfort.

Sure, I still mourn the things I lost. But as a creative, we just have to keep creating. Sure I mourn the loss of that script, that story, that article and that book. But nothing lasts forever. Sometimes, we lose things we spend so much time creating. It happens. We can’t let that kinda thing knock us off our feet. Gotta get back on that horse! Gotta keep writing. Keep creating. Keep dreaming – and dream some more.

Because there WILL be more. Always.