The Lost Worlds of Earl J. Woods

As I continue to sort through forty years' worth of photos, scrapbooks, records and memories, I stumble across reminders of lost works. Over the years, misadventure and carelessness have cost me a number of creative projects, now gone forever:

1) A short film made in high school with my friends Keith Gylander and Mark Lede. For a class project, this really hung together, with above-average scripting, music, editing and direction for its era and the age of its creators. Lost, along with about 90 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, when I used the only videotape copy to apply for a job after university. The employer never called back, and I lost track of where I'd applied.

2) About half of the epic House Party role playing game rules meticulously crafted by Jeff Shyluk and me. What remains is still pretty amusing, but both of us were so heartbroken by the loss of the bulk of our work that we never returned to complete the project.

3) An entire notebook containing short story ideas and a detailed account of the University of Alberta Star Trek Club's 1992 voyage to Los Angeles.

4) A commercial for a fake soda pop, Ozone, directed by me for another high school project. Accidentally taped over, along with a bunch of footage of high school friends that I would have loved to review.

5) Most of my online work from the early days of the Internet, short stories, poems and essays posted on the various Edmonton-area BBSes.

Naturally most of this stuff means little to anyone but me and perhaps a small circle of friends and participants. I still regret the loss. Objectively speaking, none of the items listed above have cost the world much in terms of great cultural achievements (with apologies to the friends who helped me out with some of them), but those works were mine (or ours). Each story or video or fragmentary notion represented the imagination of a particular group of people at a particular point in space and time. I'm sorry they're gone.