Tragic material loss

[Pariah]

Typifying the unreliable and insecure nature of UK railway travel, I was recently robbed of a bag containing not only my laptop, camera and calculator, but also various personal documents - including a 2003 diary, nearly completed. The gadgets are insured, easily replaced; I had backups for most of the laptop's contents. The diary can never be replaced, only reconstructed in a bare outline. I probably wasted dozens of hours writing it through the year.

I'm forced to wonder if someone out there is reading it, and getting to know me better than my family do. Maybe it will sit in a drawer somewhere for years, pass from hand to hand - who knows, even find its way back to me, maybe decades hence... Or, worse, it was likely just thrown away and destroyed.

I wonder if anyone else has experienced such an annoying loss, unique to themselves - as opposed to a bereavement? If so, how did they come to terms with it?

Call me a selfish jerk - I admit that misery DOES love company.

 

[sysyphus]

What's so selfish about that? It's not a material loss since the loss is of your own thoughts.

I've never experienced such a loss per se, though when I was 13 a friend of mine and I had been working on a comedic play the script of which we lost on a trolley. It was our one and only copy. Though we remembered most of it we never bothered with it after that.

 

[carlosMM]

A good frend of mine had something similar happen, he lost his ONLY picture of his child that lives with the Mom in South America. Luckily, the thief was kind enouhg to place all non-valueable things in a plastic bag that was found deposited at the door of a nearby police station.

I hope against all odds that you have similar luck!

 

[funxus]

There should be an honor thief code that includes that all personal stuff that is aquired accidently when robbing/stealing from someone should be returned to some kind of lost and found, with a description that identifies the victim.

Hopefully the thief has at least some moral to give back what he doesn't need.

 

[ArbitraryGuy]

Originally posted by funxus

Hopefully the thief has at least some moral to give back what he doesn't need.

Somehow I doubt that.

 

[Pongui]

I once left an envelope of love letters on a bus stop bench. After 30 minutes and a frantic jog back across the bridge, it was gone. Strangers gazed variously into windows and watched traffic passing by.

A newspaper ad yielded one prank call.

A few days later it turned up at the transit company lost & found, intact.

 

[cgannon64]

Don't worry about the laptop and such, those can be replaced.

Losing your diary sucks though.

BTW I think I'm actually going to start a diary this year, like I always said I would...

 

[bobgote]

the thing with a diary is the writing down of your own thoughts. I think it's this process that is most important.

 

[Pongui]

So maybe losing a diary is a blessing. Eventually, I felt that way about the love letters.

 

[Narz]

I've lost/had stolen alot of what I've written. I feel your pain.

 

[The Person]

I'm almost scared out of my wits when I think "what if my computer crashes today? I haven't made any backups this week!" I really feel with you, man.

 

[Pariah]

Thankyou all for the symapthetic comments. @ Bobgote: that's an interesting way of looking at it. I've often wondered if writing a diary isn't a waste of time overall - I would probably never read most of it - but it would still have been nice to have the option!