Setback

I promise this post will end on a positive note…

When I made my 2019 New Year’s Resolution’s my primary one was to publish one blog post a week. Well, I managed to do this successfully through March week one, but then at the tail end of that week I left for a wonderful twelve day vacation in California.

My initial thoughts for this vacation were that I would get quite a bit of writing done. Yes, I can see now in retrospect that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but here’s where my head was. I imagined myself writing on each of the plane rides there and back and then I pictured Melissa and I spending a day on Coronado Island at my favorite beach where I was to just lounge about and write away. Well, unfortunately none of that happened. Literally none of it.

I slept through both flights and the day set aside for the beach became the day we went to the poppy fields in Lake Elsinore. I possess no regrets about going to the flower fields as they are a rarity and the beach is a constant, plus I got about a hundred beautiful photos of myself (and like ten of Melissa), so definitely not sad about that switch up. Despite my overall happiness with the poppy fields it did ensure that I had a twelve day vacation where I managed to do zero writing and thus began what became a literary series of unfortunate events.

When I returned to work from vacation it was the beginning of prom season. Those eight following weeks were exceptionally busy each and every single day. For us this period is busier than the holiday season, so when I wasn’t working, I was certainly in no proper mental state to be writing. This working fatigue dealt me yet another unwelcome setback, but it was nothing compared to the one I encountered in the first half of April.

For well over six months my MacBook Air would tell me each time I turned it on that the startup disc was getting full and would advise me to delete some files to solve the issue. Well, delete files I did, but apparently not nearly enough because one day when I went to turn my computer on the little circle icon just kept spinning and spinning and after a good ten minutes of hopes and prayers I realized that my startup disc was finally apparently full. I guess those warnings really did mean something after all.

For the life of me I do not know what was taking up so much space on this computer! Now I do boast an iTunes Library of more than 19,000 songs, but never did I consider deleting any of my prized music! I’d rather die. Plus, I have all that in my iCloud so I was certain that wasn’t clogging the disc. I opted instead to delete unused apps, old papers from college that I deemed no longer necessary, and all the uploaded pictures I used for this blog to try and offset the warnings. Still, it was apparently not enough as I found myself having to delete my Mac Operating System only to turn around and reinstall it one sad, gloomy April morning.

Once I got my computer back up and running I was able to retrieve all of my music (thank Céline!) and while I no longer had the hundreds of pictures from my wedding downloaded on there, I still have all the jump drives and compact discs they came from, so that wasn’t a worry either. In retrospect perhaps all these photos were part of the problem, but either way, they’re not on here anymore, so it doesn’t matter. Getting my music back was a huge relief, but the realization that something else was lost served me an emotional blow that I am just now recovering from.

Three years of book writing was gone. All of it. Gone. I have tried a few things to get it all back, but all attempts have gone unsuccessful. ALL the work I did on my book since my reboot back in May of 2016 has officially been erased. To say that this was upsetting would be an understatement. I had approximately a hundred pages typed up on Microsoft Word for what I hoped would be my future best-selling novel about my brother’s crazy life and now each and every single one of those pages was as if they had never been written. This was the setback of setbacks and crippled my desire to write for over a month.

Now there is a true silver-lining to this dark storm cloud. I never wrote anything for my book without handwriting it first and I still have all the handwritten material. This is a blessing, but whenever I go to type what was handwritten I typically change things four or five times, so the handwritten forms became mere shells of their original selves, but nonetheless, at least they exist. Thank goodness for old fashioned pen and paper and the fact that I absolutely love my handwriting. I have been told on many occasions it looks arabic, which I always translate to meaning suave and sophisticated, so what a compliment that always is for me to hear.

Going forward in the rewriting of my book I need a new way to type it because let’s be real here, Microsoft Word is quite basic. Who the Hell writes a book on Microsoft Word anyway!?! So dumb. It’s time to get serious and invest in some actual book writing software. If ANY of you have ANY recommendations on this PLEASE let me know! I thank you in advance because I MUST get something that will allow my writing to go on in the event another unforeseen misfortune befalls my MacBook Air. I cannot suffer another setback like this, it’s too depressing.

Two weeks after losing all my book writings I did pay to renew my website, verybeneficial.net, for yet another year of blogging. Despite feeling down in the dumps about it all I thought that this was probably the better move for me given that if I let me domain name expire it would be a nightmare to reclaim and I definitely didn’t wanna travel down that road. So in an attempt to reignite my blogging, I capitalized on the momentum of my birthday to launch what was supposed to be my comeback post. I had already written “It’s Gonna Be Me” sometime ago as retelling how I pooped my pants for the fourth time was quite an easy write. With the surge in traffic to my social media pages due to my birthday I knew that post would be a hit, and it was, however, I lost out on that momentum by failing to post a follow-up the next week. Yet again I dealt myself another self-imposed setback.

THEN as I was going over everything for my blog for the renewal it came to my attention that ALL the pictures I deleted from my media gallery were no longer present in ANY of my posts. After typing that last sentence this sounds like maybe that would be a little obvious, but here me out here. Each time I deleted them from the gallery I would always go see if they remained in the post and they always did, but apparently, after some unknown amount of time they disappear leaving just a little square where they once were. This straight up pissed me off. I rarely go back and look at previous blogs, so I had no clue this was happening, but to learn it had was just a real bitch.

Worst of all, those sweet pleasantries left on my “Ex-Girlfriend” post from that ridiculous theatre troupe appear to have joined the ranks of my book writings and are now gone forever! Those crazed comments propelled me to write “Fanmail” AND cost me a friendship, but alas, I wiped them clean from my archives and that shit is regrettably gone. Losing them sucks most of all because they’re the only ones I can’t retrieve! What a loss too because that was EASILY one of my favorite moments in the history of my blog. Taking a stand for my art was never easier than it was over the course of that January weekend and looking back I would do nothing differently. At least now I know to preserve ALL my pictures. Should have just done so from the beginning, but like Céline sings, “Coulda Woulda Shoulda, but I didn’t do that!“

So wrapping up this sad-tale-of-woe I am prepared to relaunch my New Year’s Resolution and post a new blog each week from here on out IN ADDITION to restarting my book. I have already written my next two posts, so this seems actually feasible this time.

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, so while losing all that does definitely suck, I still feel encouraged. I realize that my unwillingness to write is only serving to put my future on hold and harming no one but me. As summer is my favorite season and we are just now in the beginning stages of these wonderful sunny months I am prepared to put those good vibes to work and create my best literary work yet! The time to shit or get off the pot is here and you all know by now that I am never one to miss an opportunity to shit.

I say this often, but really and truly, thank you ALL for your continued support! If no one was reading my posts I wouldn’t be writing them, so I appreciate all of you for taking this journey with me! Hope everyone has been having THE BEST May and I look forward to seeing you all next week – for real this time!

REALLY QUICK BEFORE YOU LEAVE – Summer movie season is well upon us and if you have not yet seen Disney’s live-action remake of their animated classic, Aladdin, you need to drop what you’re doing and go treat yourself. I will go on record as saying this is the first remake of theirs where I actually prefer the live-action version to the animated. It was so much fun to watch because you could tell it was a lot of fun to make. The music was enchanting and the chemistry amongst the cast was unrivaled by anything I have seen in recent memory. All the new additions to the story tied in seamlessly with the amazingness of the old. I have already been three times and even if I had tickets for every night of the week I am not sure it would be enough to satisfy my love for this movie. THIS is how much I love Disney’s Aladdin and I hope you all give yourself the opportunity to see and love it too.