I lost my bag on Halloween night. It had two laptops—one of which was a review unit—a bunch of notes, and all the rest of my life in it. It was one of the worst and most helpless things I've ever felt. Last night I did it again.
"How in the living fuck," is the question this morning. Stupidity and alcohol wasn't enough of an answer, so here we are. This post is to serve as a warning to you all about the dangers of drunken gadget losing, a permanent record of my shame and regret.
I'm wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
If I can't track down this latest bag, I'm not sure how long it'll take me to replace everything. Probably a while. "I am pretty sure I don't pay you enough for this carefree lifestyle," Joe Brown told me this morning. (He extremely doesn't.) "Are you a drug dealer?"
So here's what happened the first time. Back in October, I was at a bar near the Giz office. It was a first date, and I was doing an idiotic non-diet where I was only allowed to drink Red Bull and vodkas. I set my bag down at my feet up against the bar, and at some point in the night, someone made off with it. When I tell the story, I make sure to point out that it was super crowded, and, like, dark? People were pushing up against me to get their drinks. I leave out that, really, I got drunk under the table by a 97-pound Asian girl and had no idea where the hell I was. By the time I left, I only had about five minutes of genuine, sobered concern in me before falling into a cab. I didn't freak out in earnest until I woke up at 4AM and realized I was totally fucked.
Somehow, this time was much dumber.
Gawker Media had a get together last night with a bunch of free booze. I had a date afterward, but hey, five free whiskeys! I blacked out five minutes after meeting the ladyfriend. That didn't stop us from making it to a second venue, though maybe that wasn't the best idea, since I don't even remember what the second place looks like. Ladyfriend says the whole evening was puzzling:
You were stringing (seemingly) random words together into non-coherent sentences, then turning them into questions by adding inflection at the end. And when I was completely baffled, you were like, how do you not understand this...?
Somewhere in there I lost my bag.
Freshly-(re)purchased Macbook Air, notebooks, Nook Simple Touch, AiAiAi TMA-1 headphones, Canon S100, HP TouchPad (a gift!), all of my charging cables, and any chance of anyone letting me borrow any gadget ever again. Gone. My shoulders hurt from sleeping on a couch I don't remember falling on. I feel like I ate a box of sand and Sasquatch piss. Not sure how much of that is anxiety over losing all of my shit sinking in and how much is the actual Sasquatch piss I drank, but it's making it hard to get anything done.
Losing, or I guess breaking, a laptop or any important gadget feels like shit—a surreal mix of heartbreak and resignation. It's worse when you don't even own one of them, or, like the laptop I did own in that first bag, are still making monthly payments. My next scheduled transfer is on the 15th.
I wrote this post yesterday morning, once the laughter in the office finally died down. Around 2PM, the beautiful, beautiful people at Craftbar informed me that my bag was safe and sound and waiting for me. For some reason, we decided filming it would be a good idea, so here's me un-shitting my pants.