CLOSURE

I’m sorry if I keep on harping on about it, because I do know that, in the great scheme of things, it’s hardly the most important thing that’s ever happened, and I really don’t want to keep bringing you down, especially when the rest of you are probably out enjoying yourselves on this holiday weekend, but since my little life was targeted by thieves and villains a few days ago, I’ve really been unable to think about anything else.

Oh wait, you’re out enjoying yourselves on this holiday weekend, so, you’re not reading this and I can say what the hell I like…

Interesting…

The shackles have been released, the gloves are off…

Except…

Anything you write on the internet is there “forever” (or until the fall of humanity which, I’m beginning to suspect, has already happened. It was about 48 years ago if you were wondering…), so we really should be more careful about the things we write. After all, you might all be outside enjoying the sunshine and the beer and the barbecues (if wet, we’ll just stand under the garage door), and waving your flags in a slightly more affordable display of pomp and circumstance, but one day, perhaps drunk as a skunk this very evening, you might just stagger across to your computer, or accidentally be sitting on the keyboard after making a particularly successful pass at the young blonde at number twelve that you’ve had your eye on (you know who you are…), and these words will still be there.

So I’d better be just a bit more careful with what I write, hadn’t I…? After all, if I put down in words some of the things I have been thinking for these past few days… Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest…

Anyway, we should let caution be our watchword. It’s still far more likely that I could do “time” for writing down a thought and putting it out on the internet than that the scumbags who broke into the offices I work in and dropped a bomb into my professional life, an event which might still lead to long-term repercussions for me and my financial security, might actually get caught and punished for what they did.

I’ve been struggling to find words, but, more importantly, I’ve been struggling to find thoughts. Every time I try to think about anything, my brain keeps on circling back to the total vortex of complications which have erupted from that one thoughtless act and I really have been finding it difficult to “move on” or “put it behind me” or whatever else it is that you are supposed to do.

I’ve often been skeptical about the notion of “closure” that gets bandied about because I have always tended to believe that it depends upon your personality. When those people stand outside courtrooms after witnessing the conviction of whoever it was did whatever wicked deeds to their nearest and dearest and claim to have got “closure” I really do wonder whether they actually have.

In many ways, I’m not sure you ever do.

Although that could just be me, after all I know full well that I’m a “dweller”, that I’m a “brooder”. I think about things, perhaps far too much than is good for me. I can’t just close a door in my mind and forget about something. It is bound to resurface again at some point and that sick feeling in your stomach will still be there, still gnawing away at me and making me wonder about my position with regards to my opinions about how I feel about my fellow humans inhabiting this planet alongside me. It’s not even that I keep blaming myself any more - the responsibility lies solely with the thieving scumbags who might, as we speak, be preparing to sue me for defamation (if I thought that they could understand a word with that many syllables) - but society still seems to. After all, if a hospital trust can be fined because someone they employed stole a number of hard drives containing patient data instead of destroying them, it seems that the moving finger really does keep on turning until it finds anyone to point the blame at.

I keep remembering stuff.

Like all of those addresses and telephone numbers and emails that are packed full of personal data and were sitting on that hard drive; like the letter I wrote confirming the holiday dates and which announces to the world the dates when there are likely to be less people around at home; like the “keychain” of passwords attached to the websites which I habitually visited…

Most of all I remember how much of a slog that nine months of daily work has been and how it will be almost impossible to recreate any of it exactly without all of the artwork files that were held on that hard drive and which were “safely” backed up to the external device which they also stole…

Companies have folded because of less…

Equipment can be replaced – although, thanks to the policy of a certain computer manufacturing company, most of the software I used to use will no longer run on their latest operating system – and you can pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again, but, I for one, feel less than inclined to go back there, place some nice shiny new computers on top of the same desks and risk having it happen all over again.

Moving in day, Sept 2011:
New kit, new hope, a brave new world. Now gone.