wow ok so its been about five months since i updated the journal, about the same for new photos on here i think, only been to the chats all of like 5 times or so since than and yeah for those that don't know (pretty much everybody on here) UGH
UGH UGH UGH with a capital U-G-H.

the reason id originally stopped updating was because i was busy with TONS and TONS of new photos, i was working on an all new website and i was going to create a new dev art page for all my new stuff, and it was going to be cool, in fact it was going to be amazing, im not trying to brag or be an ass or anything like that, but i was extremely confident in the quality of my new work, i had went as far as to begin predicting a career in the arts by the beginning of 2009. photography would be the main vehicle but i was planning on creating multimedia works involving my photography with my music and in some instances poetry or journalism read along with the rest.

Than tragedy struck

Sept. 20th, 2008 a day that will live in infamy in my mind at least.

i wont bore you all with the details of the 'incident' seeing as how i've relayed it about 100 times already but basically what happened was that my external hard drive malfunctioned, stopped working, and needs 'forensic recovery' in order to restore the data, if its even possible, and the price ranges are incredibly high, i've decided to risk sending it to a cheaper place that seems pretty good rather than not have a hard drive for X amount of time while i wait to gather enough money to pay somewhere else.

the thing that really pisses me off is that on the box they make claims saying that it's a great place to store all your photos, movies, music, etc., etc., as these files take up sooo much space, so i assumed this was a fairly safe place to keep them, my laptops hard drive only has 55 gbs, this external one had 500gb. so i put my trust in this stupid hunk of metal, all the while planning on making some backups at some point, but never getting round to it. well when the damn thing breaks down, i hear from almost everybody i talk to- 'oh yeah, you never want to trust those things, they're really cheaply made, they break all the time' and when i call their tech support, the guy says that they're meant for backup to your harddrive! I DONT HAVE THAT MUCH SPACE!! AND UR BOX SAID THIS IS A GREAT PLACE TO KEEP THESE KIND OF FILES BECAUSE THEY TAKE UP SO MUCH SPACE!!!

where was all this F-ing info when i first got this thing? it must have been hiding from me when i did my research on what to get for my data..

so yeah there was about 150 gbs on the harddrive, around 9000 photos, of course you only use so many of those but still, 9000, yeah, let that # sink in

basically everything i'd shot since i started about a year and a half ago, everything but what was on my cards(mbe 12 gb?) and what was on cds from when we first started (hard to say cause alot of those we shot in jpeg instead of raw.. lol) almost everything that was good that i was expecting would allow me to make a career out of this was in there.

anywayyy, so i never really realized this but apparently i'm alot more fragile of a person than i thought.. this little incident has caused me to go into this huge slump, i can barely get myself to do anything, if i attempt to play any music ill play 2 or 3 chords riffs or w/e and than it'll just drift off to nowwhere land cause i just cant get my heart into it.. when i had my xbox i was playing it almost constantly, and now that i dont i just watch frigging youtube videos.. it's really friggin pathetic, i hate it.

i have no more internal motivation, i look for external sources but they all seem to just fall apart, people don't call me back, they can't do anything when we're supposed to, they have their own problems(perfectly understandable im just listing a reason). i'd love to see nikki more but she doesn't get back home til late from work so i usually end up wasting most of the day and having to work during some of or all the time i'd normally have with her.. so that seems to be another closed source, i've been wanting to try getting up early with her to go running but the first week attempting this failed cause of schedules etc., but hopefully we'll be able to tomorrow.. we'll see

so ok yeah if i haven't talked to ya in awhile or you haven't seen my 'motto' or w/e it is, i'm going by Grider now, it's my middle name, always hated my first name so yeah there ya go lol

and i've let my beard grow out, and my hair, beards pretty crazy, still patchy on cheeks and a few other places but really crazy on the bottom, hairs mbe like 4 inches? i dont know how long ill let it get, im guessing some kind of ponytail lol but not like halfway down my back or nothing crazy like that, heh but yeah so yeah beard, long hair, im still wearing my army caps, and now added a military fatigue style jacket and some aviator glasses to it, i call it my Fidel Castro meets Hunter S. Thompson look, i get the 'u look like Castro' alot lol oh well i dont give a shit, i like how it looks and its not like ppl are saying it in a mean way like 'omg u look like Hitler!!' or something like that ya know <--that has the distinction of being the only emote here ^^

but yeah heres a new pic of me [link] this was taken by Nikki on sunday, heres an old pic of me [link] and yes its at the same spot where i took that shot of my dad like a year ago, 'thinking on the stones' [link]

hmm just got into some cool underground hip hop, jedi mind tricks, immortal technique, r.a. the rugged man, army of pharaohs, and a bunch of others that i haven't listened to enough to list just yet Butttt listen ppl, if you don't like hip hop/rap/whatnot OR if you listen to the crap on the radio like lil wayne *rolls eyes* than you owe it to yourself to check out this track called Uncommon Valor by the Jedi Mind Tricks with THEE SICKEST VERSE EVER by R.A. The Rugged Man, the song is about Vietnam, and R.A.s lyrics are about his dad, he was actually in Vietnam, so yeah it's pretty deep, if you thought hip hop was just about bitches and guns check this out, might change your mind at least a lil bit ^^ and read the lyrics while you're listening or you're depriving yourself of the message and that's just not cool [link] oh yeah and for ppl who do know some stuff about rap and whatnot, what you think about r.a.s flow? not in this song but just in general, i love his like machine gun style word after word instead of line after line, so Sick!

so yeah i think that's all i got to say, thought i'd give people an update, hopefully soon ill be able to get my pics back and i'll feel whole again ^^ ive taken a few new shots but like i said i've been in a funk so it's hard to really get into it ya know? so anyway, yeah sorry to be bitching people, hope everyone else is doing better than me lol

much peace and love to you all ^^

Grider C.

p.s. apologies for any misspellings or other oddities, i'm on the wifes cpu,(mines got a virus, yet another part of my fantastic recent luck!) which is windows explorer, so no spell checker, oh well, today should be better, hopefully start out running than got the whole day with Nikki! besides work of course lol