Where Have I Been?

Hey there bloggerverse!  I realized this week that I have neglected you.  I have not posted to this blog since March 29th.  That's a long time without talking to you.  I skipped an Easter post.  I have about 10 "blog ideas" in the pipeline, unwritten.  The truth is, I just have not had the time.  Why?

I am busy, okay?

Well, I have been very busy.

I recently left the Haugh after 21 seasons because reasons and took over as a Production Manager for the Arcadia Performing Arts Center.  This was supposed to be a part time gig.  It has quickly become full time and when you combine that with running my own business, I am excruciatingly busy.

Am I complaining?

No.

I love my jobs.  I love having creative freedom and the ability to make decisions.  I love that my opinion is validated daily and that my experience is rewarded.  I love that I am treated as an important member of the team.

In leaving the Haugh, I decided it was time to retire bilboatthehpac@gmail.com.  I really only used it to access Google products and services because my primary address, which ran through the gmail system is andrew@afbraggins.com.  The problem being that I still need a gmail address to use all the Google products I have grown dependent on.  I created afbragginsweddings@gmail.com.

One might assume that a large company like Google might have a fairly easy way to transition from one email address to another, seamlessly.

Spoiler Alert:

THEY DON'T!

Let me start by telling you all of the Google services I use daily that were to be affected by this change:

AdSense
Analytics
Blogger (hello, you're reading it now)
Calendar (My entire life's schedule)
Docs
Domains (afbraggins.com)
Drive (Literally all of my documents)
Forms
Gmail
Maps
Movies (I don't have physical media)
Music (I don't have physical media)
Photos (Again, all of my stuff is here, digitally)
Play
Project Fi (My phone service)
Sheets
Slides
YouTube

Essentially, by "changing" my email address, I was cancelling all of these services and opening brand new accounts with all of them.  I had to manually transfer all of my files, photos, songs, movies, apps, emails, blog posts, etc over to the new account.

This didn't actually seem too bad until I realized that even granting the new address ownership didn't actually stop the old address from owning the stuff.  As soon as I clicked "DELETE" on the old Google account, half my shit disappeared from the Earth, even though I had moved ownership to the new account.

Terror.

Thankfully, I am not a moron and backed all my shit up offline before doing this but it meant 10 times as much work as it should have been.

On a side note, one would think Google would embed the photos into the blog and they would transfer together.

Spoiler Alert:

THEY DON'T!

I had to go back into every single blog post since it's inception and re-upload every single image.

The real horrors came when switching my email address with my phone company took 2 months because my email address IS my phone company and they can't just type in a new address.

Let this be a lesson to you kids!  Before Google owns your life, make sure you're extra sure you like your email address!

I finally got everything re-uploaded and functional (except music, that's another day) and I hope that I can be more active with you!