All right. So.

Here we are.

Not even sure how to entirely get into this, but here goes.

Last Tuesday, I got alerted to the fact that this very website was down.  Apparently there was an error in communicating with the database or whatever.

Okay.  Not time to panic.  Just time to, uh, figure out what’s going on.

Did some hardcore Googling, came across a number of solutions.

And none of them worked.

What a surprise, given my lack of tech-saviness.

So, as each and every article stated as a last chance solution, I contacted the very nice people who host my website.  Sent in a ticket and everything.

Finally heard back from them.  Said that the database was most likely corrupted, and that there were a few things missing.  Managed to get the site up and running again, thank God.

Problem: because of the corrupted database, they needed a backup in order to restore everything.

Which I wasn’t even aware was a thing.

And because of that, it doesn’t exist.

So, basically, I just lost everything.

Yep.

9 years of work.  Gone.

…

……

……….

This hurts.

It really does.

I can’t help but feel this is partially my fault for not having a backup, or even realizing I needed one.  Or even knowing what a database backup was.  I didn’t think something like this would or could happen.

And now it did.

And I don’t know what to do.

The part that hurts the most is that this blog was 9 years of my life.  A veritible time capsule of starting my life post-college, heading into my library career, turning 30, making friends, dealing with whatever was going on in the world – a lot going on.

Not to mention the life that the characters themselves took – Lars.  Willa.  Eliza.  Jeff the Reindeer.  Quincy.  Cleo.  Rupert and Abel.  The Paw Pioneers.  So many, many more, with the world continuing to grow-

And it’s gone.

Just gone.

It’s disheartening.

Frustrating.

Demotivating.

And most of all, just sad.

So where do we go from here?

I really, really don’t know.

I want to say it’ll be up and running. I want to be like, I Draw Walruses 2.0, here we go!

But I can’t.

As a friend pointed out, it does feel like I lost a friend. It really does feel like mourning.

And I don’t know how to start over again.

I don’t even know if I want to.

But I think I have to.

I can’t just leave these guys behind. They’ve been a part of my life for years.

But it hurts. It really hurts.

I thought I’d be more mad. But I’m just sad. And not in the mood to draw much of anything at the moment.

I’ll be back, though. Just – I need some time.

Thanks to everyone who stops by and checks this place out.

Thank you.