Keep Calm, Carry On

*** If you've emailed or called recently and haven't yet heard from me - please try again. You are important to me and I really want to speak with you!! ***


Do you ever have those days when everything seems to go wrong? Well, I've been experiencing a full month of technology failures. First I had a hard drive crash on me (nothing original was lost, just a ton of time and work that I had put into a lot of images). That didn't surprise me though, since hard drive crashes happen at least once a year with the amount of heavy work I do, which is why I'm religious about backing up everything in multiple places. Then, while I was at WPPI, several of my email accounts just turned themselves "off". This has never happened to me before, so it took me a while to figure out what the problem was and when I went to restore the accounts, a whole bunch of old emails that I had already dealt with swamped my inbox again and now it's hard to figure out which way is up in my inbox. As if that wasn't enough, my phone just loaded a bunch of voicemails that I never received dating back almost two weeks. I seriously feel like I'm being Punked! This feels much too bizarre to be reality. Alright Ashton, where are you hiding the cameras?



Needless to say, all of these factors combined put me way behind schedule on a lot of things. It would be slightly easier to jump off a bridge into some freezing water right now in hopes of a sudden death (and believe me, we have plenty of bridges and freezing water where I live), but that wouldn't be fair to everyone who's counting on me, and I HATE letting people down slightly more than I hate dealing with out of control situations. So, I'm doing my best to handle these character building challenges, but it's definitely not easy and it's taking way more time than I would like and infinitely more time than my clients would like. Thankfully I do have two wonderful interns who are able to help me get back on track behind the scenes, but even with them here, it's still a trying process that's taking a lot of time regressing and reorganizing before any progressing can actually happen.


(click on the image to purchase this poster from Etsy)

I believe in the balance of life, and that all of the wonderful things in our lives are balanced out by really crappy things. So, if I'm experiencing all of these really crappy things right now, perhaps there are some really amazing things yet to come! At least that's what I need to tell myself in order to push forward! In the larger scheme of life, I really can't complain because all of the important things are still here for me. I have my health, my caring family, my thoughtful friends, and roof over my head - which is more than a lot of people on this planet, and I'm grateful for every day that these most important things are still in my life. It can be so easy to let overwhelming stresses take over, but when we remember what's most important in life, it gives us the courage and peace of mind to push through challenges and overcome the problems that life throws at us when we least want them. I sincerely appreciate any patience and understanding that you can extend to me during this period, as it helps me be more efficient and focused in what I need to overcome. It's not easy admitting these difficulties publicly, because we'd all like to be perfect and say that we have everything under control, but I also feel like problems are easier to deal with when other people have the opportunity to understand what's happening behind the scenes. Thank you so much for caring enough to read all of this, and for putting your continued trust and support in me. While technology may fail, I will not.


(from my iphone)