Did you hear it? The sound of me screaming NOOOOOOOOO into the sky last night? I did that unthinkable thing. I deleted a ton of photos. From 2012 - present day, all gone. I thought I had backed everything up. I thought I could recover them with a few simple clicks.
It's been a very long time since I did this. And of course, it happens when I actually decided to use my laptop again. Go figure.
It's a devastating feeling, like those years of my life didn't happen because I spent so much time behind a camera. I guess that's just life's funny way of saying WAKE UP, IDIOT. Stop living behind a camera. Or be smart enough to constantly back your stuff up, at least.
My mother-in-law had been telling me to update my website for future wedding photography. Just so happens I was feeling in the mood for it yesterday when I thought that I could unsync my Google Drive by deleting. the. entire. folder. I am truly an idiot.
I did recover some memories though, scattered as they may be. It's good to hold on to them, because before I knew it things became very different. I'm not as close to some of my friends, and closer to my family. I managed to get back some photos of Hawaii and Maggie & Ben's wedding, Gale's Wedding, Brian's fighting, bits of the wedding shoots I did with Jill. All of my awesome owl photos and stupid selfies and boring pictures of my cats gone in a blink.
I also found some of the fun drunken party photos from that one St. Patrick's Day where Tony and I were the only ones brave enough to go to work the day after. He still had as much green in his hair as he did on his face. And it was the best.
It's heartbreaking to go through all these pictures to see the beautiful west coast. Almost harder to imagined I was out there once, in what seemed like a distant life. It was fun watching babies get older through the photos, and even funnier watching me get fatter.
It was kind of fun going through all of what was recovered though. So many funny pictures I know that if I share I'll my ear pulled. Those are the best photos, because they are the silly ones. They have the best memories that go with them and maybe they are just too good to share. But some photos just bring me right back to the beach, or the mountain, or that dive bar we liked so much, or right back to the couch where I usually sit. I am such a sentimental old fool, it's really going to be my undoing.
Who knows, maybe I can get most of them back. Whenever these things happens it means I have to go out there and recreate life again. Learn from me, friends. Always back up or despair.
My next post won't be so whiny.
