Five Photos, Five Stories. (Day One)

As many of you probably know by now, Victor and I have been fortunate enough to be involved with a great group of dad bloggers online. They've accepted us into their community and because of this we've met some great dads from all over the world. One of these guys is R.C. Liley. R.C. runs going-dad.com where he writes about being a dad, exercise, health and fitness among other things. Check out his site or follow him on twitter @going_dad.

Now, as many of you might not know, there's a Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge making the rounds on social media. R.C. nominated me and today's post will be my first entry. The way it works is you are to post a photo each day for five consecutive days (good luck with that Gil) and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction, non-fiction, a poem, a short paragraph, a villanelle, whatever.

That being said, I don't think I'm going to nominate anyone. R.C. was cool enough to ask a bunch of us before he nominated anyone, and I still took a week to post. I know some people might feel pressured to participate and/or annoyed so I'll just let you nominate yourself if you're interested.

Here we go. For my first photo I'm going way back to February 3rd of this year.

What a crappy day that was. It took me forever to get home. Now, the picture isn't all that interesting, actually it's pretty terrible unless you're into antennas. The real reason I'm selecting this photo is because it is the last picture that was backed up on my Google Drive or Photos or whatever.

It's actually a real bummer because about a month ago I was out of town and I lost all of the pictures on my phone. It may seem a bit silly, but I'm still really down about it. My birthday, Mother's day, soccer games, comic book conventions, happy accidents, a whole lot of moments just vanished. Gone.

I tried recovering them, and of course I tried my online back ups, no dice. Luckily some pictures are on Facebook, and I have some that were taken by other people, but there were a few that were irreplaceable. *sigh* What can you do? It sucks but I guess it's a lesson learned. The whole experience has turned me off from taking pictures in general. I'm sure I'll forget all about it soon enough, and one slight positive is that it has reminded me to live in the moment just a bit more. To really take everything in for a beat, to let it soak it in.

So is the moral of the story is to live a little more? Be more mindful? Stop and smell the roses? Or...don't be a dumb ass and either save your pics, print them, or make sure they're being backed up online? 

Thanks for reading.