In August I left a job I had been at for 9 years and returned to being a freelance project practitioner. Time to get organised and get some ticks on my massive list of things to do. Business cards, new website, insurance and the list goes on. I've been here before so I know the drill, so this shouldn't be too painful.

Where's my portable hard drive? The one with 30 years of workshops, photos, useful contacts, my life, my universe and everything....................................................Where is my hard drive?

It's one of those things that you don't see for years, but you are sure you know where it is, so don't give it a second thought. But it wasn't. For months I have been conducting flurried attempts to find this hard drive unsuccessfully, but just couldn't put my hands on it. I've been avoiding having to go through the 100 of CD discs I have, of course with no label on them, so I had to manually go through them 1 by 1 to reconstruct 30 years of work.  I had to resurrect old phones, laptops and other technology to try to piece what scraps of documentation I could salvage.

Halfway through this awkward, messy, annoying process I moved a box of old sketchbooks and I saw a black USB lead. I pulled it and out popped that red plastic covered key to my history.

Though a very frustrating time of searching for a lost thing that was inches away from where I always thought it was, by going through endless disc and files I have had a chance to rediscover past projects and how truly amazing and fun they have all been.

I'm glad I lost my hard drive and I'm even happier now I've found it again.