Starting over

We recently experienced a death in the family. It wasn't entirely unexpected. It had been a long, slow, drawn out process. There were signs for weeks, even months leading up to the final moments. The symptoms were classic- countless viral illnesses, memory loss, blackouts, paralysis. It was a power surge caused by the summer heat that finally did it. Mike tried CPR, shock therapy, even transplants and brain surgery, but nothing could be done. Our 5 year old desktop computer was pronounced dead at 5PM on a Wednesday afternoon, approximately 2 weeks ago.

A replacement arrived in the mail a few days ago. It is interesting starting fresh. No picture files. No documents or old primary lessons or preschool plans. No downloaded programs for picture viewing, webcams, toolbars, or games. No favorites or bookmarks. Nothing.

Strangely, I don't miss it all. I had Mike back up the pictures about a month ago, and rest are on the camera still, so no loss there. Everything else is gone, but I don't really need it. All the documents I was never going to open again. All the clipart that I used once then never touched again. And dozens of "favorites" that I just had to keep up with regularly. Blogs, recipes, websites, and other time vacuums. Two weeks later, and I really don't miss them at all.

I wonder why they were so important in the first place? I was prepared to spend a few hours hunting out the urls and replacing them all, but I think I am going to leave them alone in cyberspace. I wonder what else I can virtually declutter from my life?