Project Delete Previous Life

Several weeks ago, my computer (Mona) started giving me this awful message you can't do what you're trying to do because your disk space is full.  All of a sudden my 3 years of uploading every picture I'd ever taken & my 1 year of taking 1000s of pictures & videos of Isaiah PLUS 1 year of business file after business file (and saving all of them), all of these things finally had caught up to me.  It was time to do something with those 15,000 pictures & almost 1000 videos.  Oh & like 10,000 songs. 

I didn't want to buy an external hard drive because I had one before.  It was this huge box that was really annoying.  I lost the connecting cord amidst many other mystery cords, so when I moved I justified throwing it away because well I couldn't use it without the cord right? 

I love Vimeo so I decided it made sense to upload ALL of my videos to Vimeo since my intention for filming most of them was to eventually share it anyway.  That project took weeks & weeks because I had to preview them all first to make sure that I wanted to keep them.  And in the beginning I was living with the in-laws & really really slow internet.  So I only recently completed the project a few days ago.  In the middle of that, I realized that some videos weren't meant to share with the world when I accidentally uploaded a breastfeeding video without adding privacy & it got like 50 views in one day.  Oops.  Don't even try to look now - it's protected! 

This was a good decision, especially after I realized that if I ever have time to edit any of these, I can download them back onto Mona for further use.  I'm just screwed if Vimeo (and/or the Internet) ever go under.

I freed up about 20 GB of space on Mona, but she still wasn't acting right.  All of the joy of using my Mac was gone because every single action took so many seconds longer than it was supposed to.  The more practical implication of this loss of joy is that it was taking me forever to work.  So I became kindof obsessed with organizing & freeing up space on Mona. 

I deleted pictures.  I toyed with uploading pictures to Dropbox then deleting the duplicates from my computer.  I deleted songs, ones by artists I didn't recognize or that I knew I wouldn't miss.  

Finally after freeing 50 GB & shhe still wasn't back to normal, I took her in to the Apple Genius doctors.  Today. 

Then a pretty important piece of info - there is a separate trash folder for iPhoto, so when I was deleting all of my pictures, they were deleting but not freeing up space because they were still in the iPhoto trash.  Now I remember learning that once.  It's too bad that I didn't remember though because when they weren't freeing up space I started deleting duplicates from the big photo folder & that really deleted iPhoto's ability to load the pictures which essentially deleted the picture.  I lost about 50 pics from Christmas about 4 years ago when the Kipapas visited Dallas.  They were really great.  But I guess they will only remain great in my memory.

Mr. Apple Genius also did some magic trick that made everything go faster.  So that part is back to normal - yay!!!  Because of course I would be totally happy with being forced to buy a new computer, but there is no way we can afford one right now.  We don't even have credit to fake buy it.

But I still succumbed to buying an external hard drive, which actually wasn't horrible because they're pretty awesome these days - small & pretty & much roomier than when I bought mine (years ago pre-Mac days).  I'm okay with this because I know I need to get a handle on my space usage going forward because I'm not going to take less pictures or shoot less videos.

So since Isaiah went to sleep, I've been moving music over to the new hard drive.  It's been very bittersweet.  Music used to be so important to me; I spent years creating that 10,000 song library.  I would constantly be on the lookout for new albums from my favorite artists, and when I moved to Dallas, I was always going to shows.  I still love music, and I always will, but I think it's developed more into an appreciation rather than a passion.  These days I would much rather listen to an album in the background while I'm working instead of going to a show.  In fact, the thought of going to a concert right now (especially any kind of festival that is outdoors) sounds miserable to me.  And when I do listen to music, I trust Pandora to give me my favorite mix based on my mood.  It's much more practical for my current needs then creating my own playlists out of music I collected up until Isaiah's birth.

Nevertheless it's a little sad letting go of it all.  It's like deleting my previous life.  I'm okay leaving that life (cause I love my life lately), but erasing evidence of it is a little different. 

I guess sometimes we have to get rid of old things in order to make room for much much better things.

Bye concert-going Jewel...

Bye partier Jewel...

Bye server Jewel...

Bye old Jewel...

Make way for a much better business owner Jewel, wife Jewel, & Mommi Jewel.