I’m not really sure where to start.

*deep breath*

Ok. So Thursday night I was working on some digital scrapbooking pages so I could finish things up for a photo book I was working on. I was watching the Democratic National Convention coverage on CNN and eager to hear Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

Before I continue, I would appreciate it if my readers could make me a promise. Please don’t comment on what happened after the speech and make a negative link to supporting Obama to what happened. I know people will think that but I will not allow such comments on my blog. This is not about politics, this is about hard drives.

K?

So after hearing the speech, I was inspired to donate a little money to the campaign. I’ve never EVER donated for a political campaign, so this was a big step for me. I decided to donate a very nominal amount of money and as I reached for my wallet, my external hard drive tipped over. I didn’t think anything of it – put it back right side up and entered my payment information.

Then, I went back to photoshop to finish a few more pages and became physically ill.

My computer no longer recognized my external hard drive. You know, the place where ALL my photos from the last 6 or 7 years were stored? The place where all my digiscrap projects were saved… All my projects, graphics, etc I’ve created in the past couple months – GONE.

I tried everything – unplugging cords, restarting my computer, etc.

Nothing worked.

I have since tried a couple file recovery programs and it looks like I can recover a few folders of photos… of course these are not the folders I hoped for. So I don’t know if I’ll even bother recovering them, as I would have to buy the full version of the programs to do so.

I wanted my Guatemala photos. I wanted my digiscrap projects. I wanted my priceless photos of family and friends from the past few years.

But they are gone. All gone.

Of course, this all happened a couple days before I planned to back up my EHD to Cd’s. Isn’t that the way it always happens?

I know I can get some of these photos back. My dad has copies of our photos from Guatemala from this trip… and I know I will get a copy of photos from last year from another team member.

But what about my sister’s wedding? My best friend’s wedding? My graduation from college? My doggies? My friends’ children? My treasured memories?

Gone.

If this isn’t a lesson for each of us to be DIGILANT in backing up, I don’t know what else can call you to action.

I am currently backing up my internal hard drive thru the online system Mozy. I don’t want to lose all that too. Luckily, I had most of my digital scrapbooking papers and elements also saved in zip form on my hard drive so the only things I really lost were some brushes, actions and CU templates.

Many of my precious friends have suggested ways of recovering the data, but I am not hopeful. Nor do I have the extra funds to pay experts to get those images for me… if they’re not corrupted.

So, needless to say, I haven’t been very inspired to play in photoshop, to continue digital scrapbooking right now. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. And I feel like I was finally getting good at it, too!

In fact, I’d prefer not to be on a computer at all but I can’t do that. I have to make money somehow.

I am currently finishing up the details on some new services I will be offering, which include splash page customization, blog customization and biography/freelance copywriting. My goal is to save up money to buy a new computer in the spring. Perhaps an iMac? (Holly, I know you’ll be excited about that).

Also, not surprising by any means, I did not make the Fancy Pants design team. It was my first time trying out for something like that so I will chalk it up to experience. But, here are the projects I submitted.