About two weeks ago I was working on a new post. Wix (the site hosting this), when going to upload a picture said I was over my limit for storage, and not by a little bit. I was at 5 GB out of a maximum (free) 500 MB, 10 times the limit. This was clearly a new implementation from the previous week, since it hadn't been a problem when publishing my last piece and I didn't put 4+ GB worth of pictures into a writeup of Whistlepig 10.
There was/is an option to upgrade my site, getting more storage and other features (that I doubt would be used) but requiring a monthly subscription starting at $16/month, more if I wanted more than 2 GB. I was an immediate no on that. I love doing this, and am proud of what I've put together here, but I'm not paying that. Another solution was needed.
In my head it was easy, just delete the pictures from the upload pool. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought it wouldn't impact any of the old, published posts, as the pictures were already on those pages (right? right?). But I was wrong. After deleting everything I realized all of the old posts now had no pictures, no cover photo, nothing. My heart sank. I ran through a wave of emotions.
I did some triage as quickly as I could. Over the next hour or two I was able to restore, more or less, the most recent posts, since the new year, though in several cases with fewer pictures. Then I went back about a year and at least added a cover image. I also needed to re-add the background, of Gary Busey, that appears on the main page. I'm guessing none of you actually noticed anything is wrong, but meanwhile I was freaking out. That's where I've left it since.
Here's what happened, if you care. When uploading pictures here they clearly sit in a repository of some kind, which the pages reference when I add them. They don't exist on the pages themselves. I should've checked on, tested, how this worked before I deleted everything en masse. I do things like this sometimes, where I'm overly confident and turn out to be wrong. This is one of the worse examples of that and I continue to mentally beat myself up for it. Anyway, now if you look there are blank images where these pictures previously appeared.
Perhaps you don't go back to any old posts, that's cool, but I do. I think I've stated before that one of the reasons I do this is to create a digital scrapbook, of my interests, of my life. It's fun and useful to reference some of these now, like the food posts when I'm making something again, or the parenting ones when we're going through something for a second or third time. Many more should be fun to look back on as time goes by. That idea is now thoroughly damaged. No, none of the text or links or videos were removed but something was definitely lost in quite a few cases, where it won't be the same without the images. I feel a need to fix it somehow.
First there are problems to address. There's the fact I periodically go through my main photo storage on Google and delete pictures I don't need anymore, like ones that went into old blog posts (doh), so sometimes there won't be even backups if I wanted them. There's the sheer amount of time that went into everything I've done over the past three+ years, as I approach 300 total posts, and the very idea of looking closely at it all is daunting. There's still that frustrating (but understandable I guess) storage limit implemented by Wix.
At this point I've already taken a couple weeks off and, to be honest, to a certain extent it's been refreshing. As much as I love doing this it's also like a job where I'm near constantly thinking about the current project or what I want to do next. I get obsessive and irritable when I'm not able to finish a post in a desired timeframe, and am always putting pressure on myself, unnecessary or not. Taking a break from that has been good for me. But this is a part of me now, an outlet and a way to stimulate my brain, and there's more to write.
I've been trying to decide what to do, and am thus far undecided. I will say I want to salvage everything I've written so far. If I can accomplish that it'll take a good amount of effort, but maybe not as much as I'm guessing. This will likely have to include a cutdown on images, for obvious reasons, and that's okay (I've learned emptying the trash is an important step). I want to keep writing new stuff too, but, for a time, there's at least going to be a major slowdown as I sort this all out. It could include a host change, I don't know. The biggest problem of all is time. I've been struggling to get one post out a week, before this happened, and I seemingly have continuously shorter windows in which to work and think. The three kids are all on different schedules and there's rarely a break during the day, especially when the eldest is home. The two-year old has been trying to exert himself and gets really mad and loud when it doesn't work, which is often. The nearly six-month old wants to eat at inconsistent times and stubbornly fights naps and has spent a lot of time screaming lately. I'm (I think) more emotionally drained than ever by the end of the day and feeling a little overwhelmed just with my role as caretaker. This problem with the blog has been easy to put off.
The thought behind writing this, besides trying to give an update, was to help myself come to a conclusion as to what to do, but it hasn't worked out that way. I don't think this is the end for this blog, but it might be the beginning of it. For now we'll call it a something of a hiatus. When I do have time I'll get to work on fixing what I broke. When I'm more inspired than usual I'll try to put something new out. The key is going to be removing that pressure on myself, which hopefully doesn't kill the urge to write entirely. We'll see...
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