Theft and Recovery

It felt as if my identity had been wiped clean. It felt as if I was missing a limb. The virus attacked on Saturday--- nothing could stop it and I tried. I had spyware, I had virus protection, I had a firewall. This Trojan Horse plowed through everything and shut me down for a week. The Geek Squad at Best Buy tried everything--- but it was so deeply encrypted, deeply malicious, maliciously smart, that it resisted every effort. Finally nothing was left but to erase everything off my computer and start over. Now I'm a good girl and keep my files backed up, so I wasn't concerned about losing a script or a syllabus or a short story or a novel.

However, my desktop is a mirror of myself. It's a mirror of my artistic, professional and personal self. There was order and reason to the arrangement of every icon: the right side had all my folders, the left had all the software. Each folder occupied its own geography on the blue space of my screen. Folders right of center were the most current, those in the upper right hand were archives. This positioning mirrored what was most current in my life, what was most important. This geography of my desktop was precious to me. It was literally a road map of my life. A portrait. It is one of the most important ways I define myself.

Last night I couldn't face the emptiness and the job of rebuilding. This morning I move forward. It is not easy. The invasion of this virus affected everything in my life. It stole my identity, it stole my time, and my money. It occupied every waking moment for a week. I offer a curse to all the hackers participating in this dissemination of this virus:

May you know what its like to have complete and utter disruption of your life from a malicious anonymous source.