And *poof* the data was gone.

’twas the night before Christmas (Eve),
and all through the house,

everything was in chaos,
even my spouse

I had to do printing,
gifts to give made it so,

but my laptop decided the answer was, “No!”

laptop smokeSo Frank wasn’t really in chaos, but my laptop did decide it wasn’t going to cooperate. By not going to cooperate? I mean it decided life wasn’t worth living anymore and a factory reset was it’s only option.

I lost everything that’s not on my external hard drive, in the cloud, or in my email and after a conversation with a friend who does such things, it’s gone. I can’t find the power cord to my external drive so I haven’t been able to back up anything in about 3-6 months. I’m just really glad all my client stuff was done before then.

Stationary stuff for shows and the shop? Most of that is gone, but I can recreate it. I’m not taking on any new digital custom work for the time being, but I’m still able and willing to do other custom work until I get this sorted out!

I’m lucky that my brother is super understanding about the status of part of his Christmas gift and that I could print the other part of it at my mom’s house the next day, but man, that was a really bad feeling.

Lesson learned. External hard drive everything all the time. I’m usually really good about it too.

Silver lining though? I’m choosing to look at this as an opportunity to reorganize my digital files once I find the power cord to the external drive.