#ok i tried uploading 2 but tumblr keeps crashing so i guess. just take this one pic. 🥲

[johndonneswife]

[forevermuffins]

TL;DR Optimize your actions, or fall into madness and obsession

I just wanted to say this and get it off my chest; small little story of obsessiveness and procrastination.

I have had this slight... shall we say “occupation” to go through my feed daily and archive things I really like; mainly images. I like seeing peoples stuff (obviously) and... I’m not sure; call it hoarding but I feel it was important, IS important, to have these posts squirreled away.

Over a year ago my archival was interrupted by a disruptive issue with my backups and my main PC that effectively dumped out months of data... where the mild obsession really set in. I got that all back by trawling my browser history, and then i tried to catch up back to my current day which was due to lack of optimization about 2 months behind... and I burnt out, said I’d do it later. I continued to view my feed and select images but didn’t archive them because my archive was “supposed” to be chronological...

I did do it later, but didn’t compromise with the mere audacity of the task and barely optimized my processes, and burnt out again. Now we come to December, I had finally sat down and decided I was going to streamline the data and basically rapid fire this, just button presses, take mere minutes per day of archival, there would be errors but mostly chronological. Thought I had time... end of the month with the silliness of Article 13 and other things happening.

On December 3rd I went to work early in the day, went to my one class afterwards, and came home to goof off, got on Tumblr about say 2 in the afternoon... to see the news about Tumblr and their removal of infringing content.

The floor fell out from under me.

I had in front of me almost a year, a YEAR, of images to go through, AND go through all the blogs I had wanted to since this madness began. This sounds like an effort in not just futility but idiocy, not just to do in a month but in 2 weeks? 

I could’ve at anytime did all of this, and I didn’t, procrastination and obsession leads to nothing getting done but stress fully.

I immediately threw myself into archival of not just my selected posts but using TumlrThree to dump my followed blogs. As I did this I watched as blogs disappear from my count, some I got to in time as the few days went by, some I did not.

I was stressed, my mind was racing, I had 2 computers running this and I was still behind. I couldn’t be around all the time to do the custom archival but my 2 computers could do all the blogs while i was gone. And boy did they go... I followed nearly 1k blogs, hilarious I know. 

On Thursday my main means or archival broke, as my Browser that stores the links (chrome) now can’t download(or upload) a single file without crashing itself. Had to build a work around with firefox, very troublesome, very stressful.

On Friday, things broke. I was thinking how I’d schedule everything in the coming days while working, my mind whirring my body all tense STILL, and I just... said NO, no more, just dump it like you are the blogs, be done with it.. then I had this idle thought... I was never told there was a cap on my internet...

There was a soft cap. 1TB. I had blown through past 2TB(possibly almost 3TB), and I didn’t even realize it; I thought maybe 1.4TB not... that... 

That’s what happens when you take uncompressed video from tumblr I guess. Haven’t got the bill yet, I am guessing $400. Did I mention all my drives and backup disks were being filled, and I bought more for this? That should’ve been a sign I might being going crazy...

So now I had significant money in this farce and was making myself ill with stress; I stopped, pulled the plugs, said I’ll wait for my bill to reset and just mass dump my image archives like I should’ve when all this started. I then felt “lighter”, almost sorta reminded me after taking a hard test in College, I just was ok with it, whatever happens, it’s going to happen no need to stress about this anymore. 

Here I am now, days later, and that feeling is sticking around. I feel the faint dread of the upcoming 17th and all that may or already has been lost, not using my PC to watch videos or anything heavy to keep down my data impact, but I am fine, and once its all backed up in a few days... I find I am not really interested in keeping this thing up into next year. Maybe a New Years resolution I guess?

Was it worth it? Doubt it. But at least I am Fing doing it, because I said to myself I would.

What did I take from this? If you are going to tackle something time consuming, do it efficiently and don’t hang yourself up in details if those details make you stress out needlessly. Also obsession is not the best time sink.

(I am a hoarder aren’t I? LOL)