At heart, I’m a writer. I don’t make money from writing — well, unless you count my business, where I do provide some technical writing skill — but those who know me also know I’m all about the written word. As a result, I keep a lot of things I’ve written, including entire novels that are lined up like baby ducks, waiting for rewriting and editing.

Being able to re-read what I’ve written, especially as I progress through the process of losing weight, is extremely important to me. While I know I don’t have much of a following or readership for this weight loss journal, that’s not what’s important. I write for myself. And the words I’ve shared, here, have brought insight, pain, exhilaration, tears, vindication, and revelation. This has been a soul- and mind– searching process.

So imagine how I felt when I sat down to share this week’s thoughts, and discovered that I had erased my journal files.

Because it happened.

I’ve lost myself, again — age 19 or 20, and probably 130 (or so) pounds. Gone!

My heart was in my throat. Over three years of self-revelation and dissection? Poof! Gone! Sure, it’s on a website where I could, if I wanted, reassemble everything — but that’s not the same thing as having everything in one perfect place, as I’ve been doing for years. Years. A baby born on the first day of my diet is likely in his or her second year of preschool.

And I, a woman who makes her living with computer technical skills, deleted over three years of journal entries. *head-desk*

I was absolutely sick for a moment. I’d been storing them via DropBox. A few days ago, I did some mass deletions of files, many that were marked as permanently deleted, and while I waited to see if maybe — just maybe — I’d done the same thing to my journal files, I’m pretty sure my heart stopped about six times.

I even had time to contemplate, quite seriously, whether I still needed the support of those past words. I’m not sure I need them, now, in the same sense I needed them a year or more past — but, by the grace of DropBox and my own stupidity in not marking them for permanent deletion, I was able to restore the files to their original location.

Whew!

My mistake? I often find myself getting ahead of myself rather than living in this one singular moment and fully thinking about my actions. This is nothing new; I have to slow down, be deliberate, be thoughtful, and understand what I’m doing at this very second instead of the task I’m heading to, or the one after that.

When I don’t pay attention, I make mistakes. It doesn’t make a difference whether I’m deleting files, using the wrong ATM card (did that one just this morning!), or forgetting to water the plants in my back bedroom (oops).

The same holds true for weight loss — no surprise, there. When I’m not mindful, I don’t lose weight. It’s been a long process of being more mindful about what I’m eating and how I’m taking care of myself to get back into losing mode. It’s far too easy to not be in the moment during the holidays, but I’d rather have the gift of moving forward with weight loss than make mistakes that take time to recover.