Is File Fragmentation still a thing?
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Before I made the switch to Mac computers, my PC regularly suffered marked slow down. The usual cause: file fragmentation — when pieces of files are found throughout the hard drive.
Think of it this way: you are carrying a basket of goods — socks, jewelry, the Harry Potter series. You had plans to put them away, but your kid roars awake. So you store the items hastily into whatever free space you find, jamming a pair of socks into the lingerie drawer, another with the belts. You squeeze some of the Potter series on the shelf, but the rest go in the shoe closet. Some of the jewelry go into the box of photographs, and the rest are dumped in a bowl on the dresser. Then you rush off to attend to your child, praying you find things when you need them.
The PC does the same thing. As we delete files, we free up bits of space throughout the hard drive. Bits of space free up in the music section when we delete a song; space frees up in the images section when we delete a photo. The computer tries to do things efficiently. So when we add a new app, for example, the computer puts it in the first available free space it finds. It may put part of that new app in the music section and another part in the images section, all resulting in fragments of files stored in random places. As this fragmentation builds up, computer speed is compromised. (Imagine having to find those socks while your family is waiting in the car!)
When this happens, your IT department tells you to DeFragment your files. The process of file defragmentation instructs the computer to sort out its internal mess so it can once again function properly.
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I am a PC. When I am triggered, or experience new emotions, or have curious thoughts, I park them in crevices of my brain with a note to explore in the future. As these unprocessed little thoughts accumulate, I start feeling unmoored. Shallow breathing and tensing of the jaw starts. I become woman on the verge of system shut down.
This is where writing comes in. I write to defragment. To take a mental shard of unsorted information, decipher what it is, give it a name, and store it in its proper place. Writing allows me to pick up pieces of my puzzle from all over the room, and put them together to see the larger picture of who I am.
Someone once challenged me, “why do you write anyway” as if to suggest I should stop with my over-analyzing. But the opposite is true. I write to un-over-analyze. To bear witness to my chaotic inner landscape, and distill like crazy so I can figure out the singular truth of who this person is and who she is becoming.
Writing is my release. It is my out breath.
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Yes, all well and good. All beautiful theory.
The truth is, I hardly write. Unless the message is so clear that it’s practically writing itself, I very seldom have the desire to sort through my inner wreckage and write my way to salvation. Writing is a harrowing activity for me. It is equivalent to cutting off my head to end the headache.
And this is why, on a sober Spring day in Spain, I decided to embark on a challenge: to write and process my fragments every day for 100 days. Why the hell? Because first, I so desperately want to believe in the saying that “Practice makes comfort”. If I write everyday, it is my sincere hope that at the end of this fantastical challenge, it will no longer be as agonizing.*
And because second, while I am now a Mac, file fragmentation is very much still a thing. With so much that has whirled and continues to whirl around me, unprocessed thoughts of this Woman on the Verge is accumulating at a perilous rate. She is kindly asking to be pulled out from under the heap.
Wish us luck.
* Important note: while I am hopeful, I am also realistic and merciful. There is absolutely no intention to produce 100 new written work. Just the act of writing for 30 minutes . . .20 minutes . . . heck, 10 minutes is sufficient. And processing the same one fragment for 50 days is fine, too. Let’s see.