Oh, my God. What did I do?

When I realized that I had lost 5 months of pictures (August thru December, 2011), that's what I said. "Oh, my God. What did I do?" I preach backups. I preach making sure you are sure that your data is reasonably safe. Backup to two externals, keep one safe at home (in a safe if you have one), and the other off-site (like at work). And here I loose 5 months of pictures. How? Thinking I had done a proper backup but without verifying it. Had to format a hard drive, so I had both backups at home, formatted the drive, then restored it - without verifying that the last 5 months of 2011 had NOT been backed up.

Ugh. It took me into a 100% depression. Gone. Disappeared. Memories - they're still in tact. But the pictures? MIA. And it was All. My. Fault. Stick a gun to my temple and pull the trigger.

So now I have at least one proper backup, and am making another. Am I so dumb and stupid to not doing this again? Dunno. I've already formatted memory cards without verifying I had already copied them to the computer. (Just did that last week at work.) Really? Am I getting that senile? Ugh.

So - why two copies? One is to protect against accidental deletion and/or hard drive failure. This one is the "parent". The version I reference on the primary hard drive is the "child". But what happens in the case of a catastrophic failure? Fire? Theft? Take an older copy - the 'grandparent' - off site to work or to a relative. To be completely covered, send it out of state. You could make a copy to put in a data-mine, but that's *really* expensive.

What to back up? I don't back up my system or applications. I can always restore those. The data is the part that once gone is gone. Back up the data. Pictures, taxes, Word/Excel documents - that stuff. And back it up twice.

Enough. I was able to use a utility and at least get some of the previews out of Lightroom into JPEGs, so all is not lost. But it hurts that they're reduced/downsized images rather than the full and final product. And I also was able to download the images I uploaded to Zenfolio, so I have full-sized versions of the final product. But I'm the kind of guy who always finds something else to fiddle with, and it's always a good practice not to change a picture that has been changed.

Time to get back to freezing time. 1/250th of a second at a time.

*sigh*

It's been over a year, (two years?) since an update was made to this blog. Why?

1) Lots of effort for very little payout.
2) I don't read blogs, so why am I writting one?
3) Depression.

And #3 is the primary reason. Depression about what? Photography? Yeah. Exactly that. Don't get me wrong, I love taking pictures. But I'm taking less and less of what I love and want to shoot, and more and more time is given to stuff.

Time management? HA! HAHAHA! In fact, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! In this day and age of setting up meetings via Microsoft Outlook, where someone schedules a meeting on my calendar without my prior knowledge, my ability to control my own time is given to someone else. And this results in more time spent at work, working less and less on what I do - what I love. And as more requests come in, and more meetings are pointlessly spent in trying to figure out how to spend our time, I find myself more and more at work doing less and less. I try to get in around 5:45 a.m., which means I'm out of the house around 4:10. My day ends around 3:30-3:45. But for some, I get meetings scheduled at 3:00, and they run late because "Nobody has another meeting to run off to, right?" (Me) "Well, yeah. I do. I need to get on the road to miss traffic." (Them) "But this is important. Right?" (My alter-ego) "Are you saying YOU are more important than my FAMILY?" (Me - in reality) "Right. *sigh* Fine." On the road around 4:30 or 5:00. 12 hour day. And if I do get out at 3:30, my trip home is around 50 minutes. If I get out around 4:30 or 5:00, the trip home can be an hour and a half. By the time I do get home, I'm whupped.

Just go to bed early? HA! I double-dog dare you to try and fall asleep before 11 in this neighborhood/household. By the time Friday roles around, I'm a walking zombie. So instead of doing what I love to do, or even what I need to do (around the house), I'm in a recovering vegetative state waiting to do it all over again.

Recently, I went to Photoshop World. I needed a major realignment in my views of photography, and this event usually does the trick. But this year, I went home in tears. Completely depressed. Completely feeling like an utter failure. Why? Because I love photography, and I can't do it. One thing was pounded in loud and clear: Practice, and practice often. Jay Maisel (google him) takes some of the most incredible New York people/place pictures I've seen. He's 81, and heads out each day to snap pictures. Me? I'm stuck in traffic. Stuck in meetings. Stuck in hell.

So yeah, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Sorry to drag you down, but it took Photoshop World to help me see what's wrong.

So what can I do about it? My time is still not my time. That's a part of the new order of things. I can't block out time on the calendar, because even if they call first, the meetings will still happen on THEIR time. Retire? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! In this day and age? With the politicians plucking everything they can from every friggin pocket at every turn? Promising wealth and good fortune for all while we continue the fall from the cliff we jumped over years ago - and not pulling the parachute cord? Give me a break. I'm still too young. (55) I'd owe too much taxes and would still have to work.

So what can I do about it? Two things.
1) Accept it for what it is. It sucks, but I know it. Not too much I can do about it. Why fight it? That's what's leading to this depression in the first place.
2) Do something that matters, that gets peoples attention, that makes it ALL WORTH IT!!! And do it with the vehicle I love using.

Not sure where this will take me, but for the first time in a very long time, I'm excited to do SOMETHING!