I am still reeling from the shock of it all.

Two years of work.

Gone.

It’s my fault, really. I am the first to admit it. In a fit of spite, I undid all the work that I had painstakingly and lovingly built from the ground up.

I run another blog, which is dedicated solely to my life in Hokkaido, Japan. I started that blog the same time I started this one. I created two because I wanted to keep these two aspects of my life as separate as I could–even though in essence, the two are inextricably linked. After all, I live and work here. This is where I earn my income and spend most of my money. However, I wanted to focus on money issues on this blog, while the Hokkaido blog was meant to showcase what living in the north of Japan was like.

About two months ago, I got an email from the hosting company saying my contract was up. Fair enough. I appreciated that gesture. However, I set my account to NOT renew automatically. I didn’t want to be billed the full amount. Plus, I was unhappy with their hosting service so I wanted to take my time to think about other options.

Well, I forgot about it until they billed me and charged my account to automatically renew for a year.

Wait a minute.

I thought I had my settings off auto-renew. I checked it. It was. So why then did they renew it and charge me even though I deliberately didn’t want to sign up again?

So I contacted my credit card company and refuted the payment. Chase helpfully did everything on their part and didn’t pay the hosting company. The hosting company then sent me a lot of threatening emails about my account.

All this time, though, I was checking up on my website, and as soon as I did, the site was already down.

Wow, they work fast.

Before I could even back up any of my blogs, they were gone.

Poof!

And so, I refuse to pay the hosting service to recover all of my blogs because I am really sulking it’s the principle of the thing. I don’t want to pay a company for holding my own work hostage. I really dislike the way they did their business.

I spent two years working to build that site. I had followers, all 15 of them. People were actually reading my posts! Some even commented on my blogs. According to my stats, visitors from all over the world were looking at my articles.

But I let my emotions get the best of me and destroyed it in an instant.

Again, though, I know it was my fault. I take full responsibility for my mistake.

It’s been a few weeks, so I have gotten used to the idea of me starting the blog over. Oddly enough, I feel excited about the prospect. I feel like this is my chance to make it even better than before. I do remember the articles that were popular. I am confident I can recreate them and even improve some of the things I was unhappy about.

Granted, I was in shock when I first found out that I lost all the information on my site. I was cursing up a storm when I realized how stupid I was.

But now, I am ready to roll up my sleeves and do it all over again. It may take another two years, but I knew even before I started it two years ago that this was going to be a long term project. For as long as I live in Hokkaido, I’m sure I can come up with things to write about.

My fingers are itching to type.