Can't track the laptop to wherever the thief is and head over there to beat the snot out of them notify authorities? Though it doesn't really help if they just grabbed that and whatever else looked valuable and dumped everything else -_-

Also maybe people should just not be dicks to begin with.

Having said that being paranoid when I did have a physical diary/journal/thing (and even now with my laptop) if it had to be moved it travelled in a bag that was going to be with/on/near me all the time precisely because I was worried something like that might happen x_x

Starting again is really all one can do in that situation, poor bugger.

Perhaps not many on hive specifically but people in general have been using blogging as a reflection/feedback tool since it became a thing, though I don't know how many were consciously doing it as such. One of the early blogging site things was actually called Open Diary and looks like it's still active XD and the next one I was aware of (and ended up being dragged kicking and screaming onto by my friends) was called LiveJournal so there was a theme there (I deleted my livejournals when I started my own glorified blogsite). And then as more people got into it, it morphed into "finding a niche" and stuff to "prove your expertise" and "stand out". I find it slightly amusing that when I watched it start people were like WHY WOULD ANYONE PUT THEIR PRIVATE THOUGHTS AND STUFF ONLINE FOR ALL TO SEE and these days it's WHY WON'T YOU PUT YOUR PRIVATE THOUGHTS ONLINE WHAT ARE YOU HIDING (okay perhaps gross exaggeration but I remember a supervisor in one job letting me know he'd found my blog through probably Facebook at the time and liked my art and I was like okay cool I guess? and he said he didn't trust anyone that didn't have some kind of online presence, which I found puzzling).