HO-LY COW. I can't believe it's been over a year since I've posted on this blog of mine. Where has the time gone?! It feels like it was just last week that I was planning my study abroad trip to Berlin in 2013 and packing the last few things I would need for the summer. I was so thrilled to be going back to Germany, being able to visit a part of the country I had never been to before, and getting to spend some time with my mom before heading back to Texas for another semester of classes.
Last May I was also trying to be a better blogger and write on a consistent basis. I attempted to take part in Jenni's "Blog Every Day in May Challenge" -- but sadly I only made it through the first week. :( Womp womp. I did have a lot of fun tackling the writing prompts though! So much so, that maybe I'll try to do it over again, but for the month of August. Even though I only got through 7 posts, I think I came up with some pretty good stuff. I wrote about the story of my life in a nutshell, the king of all casseroles, things that make me uncomfortable, my favorite quote[s], a profession of love for my favorite blogger Casey, what I do, and how I MUST be a mermaid.
I started off May 2013 pretty dang good and had high hopes for this little ol' blog. We were going places. Big places.
Then, BAM!
I had the most AWFUL, DREADFUL, FRUSTRATING, DEVASTATING and DEPRESSING thing happen to me. We all know that as bloggers, good content is essential to having an exceptional, successful blog. But having great pictures is what reels people in and keeps 'em there. Great pictures and good content turns those browsing looky-loos into returning readers. So I had been amassing pictures. Tonnnnns of pictures. More like hoarding pictures. I had 6,000+ photos on my computer. But hey -- I had been doing some traveling and editing, and was on the verge of finally sharing everything I had been up to recently.
Except the picture gods and the Apple god had something else entirely in store for me and this here blog. They laughed in my face as my computer crashed and I got the "grey screen of Death" with the flashing folder and question mark. Before this had happened, I knew I was getting low on disk space and had even brought my dad's external hard drive with me so I could back it up and delete anything I didn't need right away. Only, I guess I should've backed everything up sooner because one day while I was downloading some episodes of Breaking Bad to watch in my apartment in Berlin [we weren't going to have internet], my computer decided to freeze and then crash before I could save anything. Timing is key, my friends. Timing is key.
I was in absolute SHOCK. Horrified. I had lost everything. All of my photos, all of my essays and other documents for school, my resumes, tax forms, copies of my birth certificate, driver's license, passports... the list goes on and on. All of it. Poof. Gone. Just like that.
I took it to Apple when I got back from Germany and after running their diagnostic test, they said my disc had come unmounted and the issue was one of two things: 1) a little cable that connects the hard drive and whatever else was either bad or had just come loose, or 2) my hard drive was fried. Fried. A computer owner's worst nightmare. The Apple genius also informed me that while issue #1 does happen occasionally, it's more likely that issue #2 was what plagued my computer. Psssshh, what the heck did he know?! The genius also recommended that I take it to a third party company for data recovery because once I handed it over to Apple, there was no way to recover any data. Which is kinda weird. I wonder why Apple doesn't do data recovery?
Anyway, feeling pretty down in the dumps, I went home with a piece of paper [on which were recommendations for data recovery companies in the area that the Apple guy had given me] and my sad, broken little laptop in tow. My laptop sat under my bed, for months, untouched and glared at with contempt every time I had something else to shove under there to "get it out of the way."
So needless to say, having lost all 6,000+ photos and not having my own laptop [my dad let me borrow his, but it I just wasn't the same], I lost all desire to blog. I never even looked at my blog until just recently. I couldn't. It was too heartbreaking, too depressing thinking of all that could've been. I completely fell off the blogging map. I even lost interest in reading other blogs. It hurt too much to see everyone else's pictures while I was mourning the loss of my own.
Finally, one day my dad came over and said he would take a look at it. He worked on it and worked on it and worked on it tore it apart and was finally able to recover all of my data. Can you believe it?! I was so thrilled he had been able save it all, and so thrilled I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg and my first born child to have my data recovered! He also managed to give me a working laptop again, by replacing the hard drive with a newer one that had more storage space. :) That's what dad's are for -- coming in to save the day when all hope is lost. ❤
Now a whole year has gone by and so much has happened that I need to catch you guys up on! I went to Berlin for a study abroad [as y'all know], I visited Austria and Italy, I went back Texas for the winter semester, moved into a new apartment, joined a sorority and so much more. Right now, I'm back in Germany, working my butt off, but I have plans to start writing once again and, minus any major computer hiccups, this blogging stuff should be more than a "friends with benefits" type thing -- it's gonna be full on relationship status [hopefully]!
OH! And I changed the name and layout of my blog, if you didn't notice! It's still a work-in-progress, but she's coming along great so far. I hope to see y'all around here more often!
Happy hump day, friends.
