They say that you don't really value things until you lose them. This isn't always accurate. I lost a lot of valuable things I made and collected over a period of three years yesterday. All along I thought the PC technician would be careful enough to back up the files in the computers in this shop, all along I thought that my shop assistants would inform the technicians that they need to be careful about erasing the files that might be important, and all along I thought the files themselves would be untouchable since they're located on a different hard drive. I only found about this last night, I was about to work on a new strip I'm going to submit to Philippine News when I looked for the folder that contained the archive of the strips I've worked on. At first I thought that there was a glitch in the networking since it didn't show all the folders contained in the particular drive so I walked over to where the unit was located and checked again. Sure enough about half the folders I created to hold the files collected were all gone!

I'm no stranger to imploding all the anger I felt inside of me. I wanted to lash out at all the persons involved but I couldn't, the initial shock held me back. Then there are people who make the really big mistake of asking me questions that I really think are insensitive at the time. Stupid questions even. Why do they have to ask during that time when I'm grieving? Why couldn't they just stand there and be silent? Why couldn't they just leave me alone? For the first time I felt how it is to feel really weak, my arms felt like Jello and I thought couldn't go on with editing my strip. If I didn't have any deadline to meet then I would have gone out and had some time alone. I shut out all my online friends that wanted to chat with me. I shut out everything around me, I stared and lashed out at those who are insensitve enough to ask further questions. I struggled with the conversations leading to the punchline so I left it and moved to coloring the strips. But everything looked wrong so I surfed the net for images I could pepper. The whole thing took longer than usual and I finished it around 2:20 am, 20 minutes past the limit set for the net subscription. Good thing my friend Ryan stayed with me through the whole thing when everbody had gone home and good thing the net subscription from old server wasn't expired yet. After a lot of trouble I was able to send the strip to the paper.

I was able to come to terms with my grief while I was having a bath this morning. I forced myself to get out of the rut by reciting Psalm 23 in the shower. I forgot the title of the book where I read about the line "he makes me lie down in green pastures" is actually a forceful act on the part of the sheperd. Due to our stubborness, the good Lord has to actually force us to take a rest from all the troubles we surround ourselves with. I pondered about this until I finally came to accept it all, I apologized to Him for not reacting in a way that would make him proud like Job did. The man lost everything and he was still able to thank God for it and in the end. There's nothing in this life that's not to be thankful about, even in the middle of my problems. After realizing this I finally found my rest.