Two days after Christmas 2024 I departed and spent a month in India practicing Iyengar Yoga. India is more than an adventure and far from a vacation. It is an awakening. But it was time to go home to my mom life with four daughters.
I carried my 16” MacBook Pro with me on this trip to type yoga notes and manage travel arrangements. But I never used it. The Wi-Fi was terrible I and my international phone plan was all I needed for the minimal communications I made to the world outside of yoga.
Before leaving for India I officially closed my yoga prop business. I was ready for an awakening of what comes next. I did not need to drag a laptop with a terabyte of old data with me, especially when not all of it was properly backed up!
My laptop proved to be unnecessary baggage
My journey home began in Bangalore with a 3:35 AM flight that was delayed. Which left me with in a 45-minute layover in Frankfurt, Germany, before my second 10-hour flight to Chicago. I was traveling solo.
I landed in Frankfurt at gate B6 and departed for Chicago at gate Z25. I had to go through immigration and the security line was barely moving. My flight was boarding in 10 minutes so I skipped the line. I felt nervous about doing it but people were kind and understanding. My carry-on suitcase got stopped for inspection, and in a hurry, I left my laptop in the security bin while I re-zipped my suitcase.
Relieved that I made it to my gate before my plane started to board, I stopped to order a cup of European coffee. I was savoring it after living through a month of instant coffee in India, when I heard on the loudspeaker… “Rebecca Simmons come to immigration.” What!? Me!? I checked with my gate agent to make sure my passport cleared for boarding and decided to ignore the announcement.
I landed in Chicago and got settled for a productive 6-hour layover before my last leg home. My layover plan was to upload my 2024 teaching hours to the Iyengar Yoga National Association United States website and formulate my teaching plans for 2025. But my laptop was gone.
Airports have lost and found
While brain when was still adjusting to what day it was, I made foggy yet determined attempts to rethink my steps. The Find My app still showed the laptop at the Bellur Iyengar Institute, the last time it connected to weak WIFI.
I searched the lost and found website at the Bangalore airport and tried to make plans for an American yoga teacher to retrieve it for me. Navigating Indian airports is its own awakening of half managed chaos functioning quite well with A LOT of people. Surprisingly several grey laptops were left at the Bangalore security the same day as mine, and they employ a helpful 24-hour lost and found staff. But they don’t ship found items.
Next I remembered that strange airport announcement as I sipped my European coffee in Frankfurt. Rebecca Simmons is my username on my computer log in which was why I was called to Immigration.
Germans, with their commitment to order, had a straightforward website for me to report my laptop as lost, a number to call during normal business hours, and website to pay my 237 Euros to ship it home. When DHL delivered it to my front door, a week after I got home from India, the laptop was still charged.
What was I thinking when it was lost?
In Chicago when I realized my computer was gone, I went into action looking for it, but I did not panic. In India I expereinced a tremendous showing of kindness and people willing to help strangers and foreigners. When my wallet fell out of my bag in a rickshaw, the driver came back to find me and return it! I had a renewed feeling of things working out and people being good people.
I thought about losing six years of yoga notes, journaling, class sequences, assessment studies and more that were left on my desktop. And I accepted that might be the case. I would move on, relying to what I know now in my head, heart and body – after India. A true fresh start.
I was also ready accept if my unsaved photos did not return to me, I could piece together enough data – from various places though iPhoto, Dropbox, social media, old blog posts, and emails. And it would be okay. That alone is enough. It would have to be. Especially compared to photo books of faded prints from my 80s and 90s childhood.
However…. my daughters are growing up and my second girl is graduating high school this year. It’s fun to look back at all the photos, memories and forgotten home videos, neatly organized on a computer desktop, versus digital overloads from smart phones now living in dust bunnies under a bed as “a back up.”
Re-entry into home life after a month in India takes time to process. The extra time to be disconnected to my terabyte of reality, in hindsight, was a gift.
A Found laptop finally made me clean up years of digital mess
The return of the laptop initiated a greatful response to back up all photos, videos, written stores and yoga notes saved on my desktop, and a collection of aging thumb drives and external hard drives.
I purged photoshoots and files from my old business, letting go of that past. I made space in my terabyte for recovered data, precious photos, videos and memories.
I am working on digital organization but not digital hoarding. Because no kid wants to be handed an obsolete computer to find their childhood photos unable to open. Or be told the story when a laptop of baby photos never made it home from India.
Old data is nice to have but I need space to move forward. Space for the unfolding of a journey that continues at home, while India stays in my heart.
Germany, thank you for sending my laptop home. Thank you for giving me a week after India, to realize I could let go and move on, but feel the relief and gratitude that I didn’t have to.
Next trip, the laptop stays home.
Incase you are curious… or need to know…
External hard drives do go bad. Scan drives go bad. And forgotten passwords for digital photo accounts can be a pain to recover.
It took a full weekend of staying focused to avoid long trips down memory lane… but here’s what I organized and backed up to digital sources.
- Six years worth of professional family photos from my laptop
- Everything on my desktop Laptop
- Managed accounts from iCloud, Google and Dropbox that included pre-smart phone years
- Twenty year old photos on thumb drives, memory cards and external hard drives hiding under my bed because I wasn’t sure if they worked and I was too scared to look.
- The good news is, the most important external hard drive worked! And I found things I hadn’t seen my current laptop was purchased in 2019.
- The scan drives worked!
- I’m only missing one photography beach session from 2018.
- In addition to having my desktop back, all the photos, stories and random files living under my bed from previous old computers are now available to enjoy.
Thank you Germany. Thank you India. 🙏