My laptop died. My paper was on it. I didn't back up. 😭

I know. Everyone says back up your work. I didn't. My laptop just stopped. Black screen. Nothing. My paper was on the desktop. Not in the cloud. Not on a drive. Just there. Now it's not.

I called IT. They said they might be able to recover it. Might. In two weeks. My deadline is one week.

Six months of work. Six months. Gone. I'm not crying. I'm not angry. I'm numb. I don't know how to start again. I don't know if I can.

This happened to me. Two weeks before my thesis deadline. Hard drive died. No backup. I sat on my floor and stared at the wall for three hours.

Then I rewrote it. It was better. Not because I'm lucky. Because the first draft was me figuring out what I thought. The second draft was me saying it clearly.

You can do this. Not easily. But you can.