So last night, I went and killed this entire website.

Without having any kind of backups available.

To make my predicament clear: there are movie reviews going back to 1999 on this site, blog entries spanning a dozen years, and a few hundred posts all-in, not to mention some 50 pages, and a painstakingly configured web shop.

The moment I’d overwritten the database with a backup of something completely different, I was strangled by the most profound sense of horrible realization. This was it. Over a decade of my writing life gone. The first announcement of my eldest son’s birth: gone. That rant about God’s existence: gone. My semi-fictional anecdote about a hot cup of coffee in the quiet compartment: gone. My furious review of Terry Goodkind’s terrible novel Wizard’s First Rule: gone. My top-ten of things Picasa sees faces in: gone. My collection of terrible English translations in a french menu: gone. My tale of molar madness and dental pain: gone.

I made a final, hopeless attempt at restoration by querying my provider, on the remote off-chance that they happened to have a backup of my site lying around. Less than 12 hours later, their reply came in.

“Our apologies,” it said, and my heart sank. “We don’t have a recent backup available.” As I read on, I began planning mentally how I would begin to create a new website, and how much of what is stored at the Wayback Machine would be useful.

“Our most recent backup is of last Friday. If that’s of any use to you…”

Suffice it to say I ordered flowers and chocolate delivered to their offices before I wrote this entry.