You know that feeling when your stomach drops, your heart races, and your inner voice screams, “No… no… NO!” Yeah… that was me… Sunday night.
I’d spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday diving deep into The 51st State—crafting what I believed were some of my most gripping, heart-pounding spy intrigue scenes yet. Government conspiracies, covert ops, double agents… The whole works. I was in the zone. Words were flowing faster than a double shot of espresso on a deadline day.
Then Sunday night rolled around.
I logged onto my laptop to review and back up my work…
And it was gone.
Like… GONE gone.
I stared at the screen. Refreshed the folder. Checked another folder. Opened and closed the document five times like some sort of tech-based prayer ritual. Nothing. All that beautiful, adrenaline-fueled work… vanished like a rogue agent off the grid.
Turns out… I’d been using Tina’s laptop for the weekend (mine was sitting at home, quietly mocking me). Somewhere between syncing two computers and cloud storage doing its thing… an older version of my manuscript overwrote my latest work.
Cue full-body panic. I’m not too proud to say… I was almost in tears.
This was that gut-punch, soul-crushing, writer’s worst nightmare moment.
But here’s where the Universe cut me a little slack… Thank God for cloud storage version history! After some frantic searching (and a few choice words not suitable for a spiritual warrior blog), I managed to retrieve a previously saved version. Not perfect… but close enough to rebuild without losing my mind.
The relief was real. Like… sit quietly… deep breath… stare at the screen… and say a little thank-you-to-the-tech-gods kind of relief.
Lesson of the day:
✅ Save often.
✅ Backup religiously.
✅ And double-check which computer you’re working on.
Also… never underestimate the emotional rollercoaster that comes with being a writer.
Back to the spy games…
With a little more caution… and maybe a backup drive or two.
May I present… Nathaniel… Nathaniel Theos
