I have been blendering :> for the past 2 years. And for the first time I felt that I was onto something when I was about to finish my first ever quality hard surface model which I planned to sell. The evening I finished modelling I tried to back up my data onto a hard disk because I wanted to uprgrade my motherboard and my cpu. At that time I spent about 2 months on the project, I took a promise to finish that model no matter what, even if I f*** half of that and that I will just have to remodel it then, but I had no backups (u see where this is going). I plugged my external disk into the pc to backup the data before the upgrade and it didnt show up so I said its 10 pm I am going to bed. The next day my motherboard arrived and in the excitment I totally forgot to backup the data. And with my pc being completely taken apart I fired up my laptop and took a sata to usb adapter and plugged it into my ssd and then into the laptop. I heard the plug-in noise went to check file manager and then the adapter disconnected and reconnected 2 times. I unpluged the ssd unknowing the fragileness of ssds compared to normal hard disks. That was the last time I saw my model :<. The days following that I got a new nvme ssd to replace the ssd. Everything I tried, no data was or could be taken from that broken ssd. I didnt want to open blender for a 3 days. After that I started to work on another model, couldnt even focus properly. Suddenly I felt like I lost it. I had all this drive, energy and I now I just procrastinate, unable to exit the cycle due to the lockdown. After 7 days I thought I got it back. My sleep started getting more stable and I realised that even if I completed that model nothing would change, I would just have a little more skill, confidence and less money. So now after 2 weeks I started to move over to cad modelling and electronics. Played with a homemade speaker and other stuff but it isnt the same. I dont enjoy doing much of anything right now. I had a passion and right now I just feel guilt and thats why I try to be productive. I also started to work on another model, I guess its going well I will try to finish it till christmas. I always thought that at the age I am right now and the things I know and can do will always push me foward, that I cant be stopped. This simple funny incident really broke me, my motivation the single most important thing being turned to absolute ash. Bonus point because of the procrastination I now have school issues which I have to deal with and I cant even focus when doing much of anything because nobody cares if I watch videos all day, I dont care but sometimes I did. What am I suppose to do? Does anybody know really?
Hey bud, sorry to hear of your troubles.
I think what is really important right now is to be careful to correlate your current feeling of despair (lets just group it under that) to that single incident. Yes its awful to lose work. If it didn’t matter to you you wouldn’t be human.
However its dangerous to lay the blame for your current lack of motivation completely down to that incident. You are human and lots of things play into how we feel and act. Its 2020, we are all under tension from covid. Its also near the end of the year and while its linked to festivities many people also feel a little down with the shorter days and dark evenings. Not to mention that coming together is difficult because of Covid which leaves you way too much time to think about the last year and your model and school and…
I think its important right now to be kind to yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back for the things that you do manage to do and don’t set your expectations too high. We all need a break from time to time. By being kind to yourself you will see that your interests will return and you will question yourself how you could ever think they were gone. It just takes a bit of time and tlc. You will be ok 
id recommend taking a long break from blender, sometimes it takes months for me to get a surge of motivation.
get a good flash drive and copy your work to it after every session. every once and a while backup to a durable hdd (store in a safe place!) so you have a backup for the backup.
we all have lost data, ive lost plenty which lead to the discovery of the redundant backup method i use. i know how it feels, you think you will never be able restore your work.
well the truth is, you probably wont get it back the way it was. but start new! this is why taking space from modelling is so important. in time it will fade in memory and making something new and better will feel a lot easier.
Will do so. I have also setup a google drive backup because of the small size of the .blend files I think its enough with the free 15gb version. I have also decided that I will start writing articles because reasearching a topic was always for me on of the most enjoyable things to do. Once I fully get back to blender I will post the progress here, if I dont forget ;). Ty for the help.
So sad to hear you troubling with your work.
I worked with TI, and i do always say , always have backups, the files i care about , i have a copy in HD, another in pendrive and sometimes a third in google drive. Drives fail, filesystems get corrupted , s**t happens, it happened to me a lot, sometimes i recovered , partially, and few times total loss, and the thing to do is keep going, lost is lost.
I can’t help on the motivation part because i am maybe worse on that (at least in relation to CGI) .
I don’t know how bad SSDs are now, but my common hard disc fried after i tried a backup last week, via usb port, so maybe is not specific, i believe in my case maybe was because the disk overheated, and a case does not provide good dissipation.
i am very sorry that happened to you. i can only imagine how awful that was for you. there are a couple things: 1) you can’t lose the experience you learned from getting this far.
2) it totally is really hard. and exhausting at times.
3) yeah you probably should invest in a really solid computer if you can at some point… and back your work up.
I know the work and time you have put in have counted anyways. I hope it won’t happen next time around.
Tnx, about the investing part, my pc is good enough for games, but the card is AMD, and i do not plan to turn myself in professional, will stay as hobbyist by a few reasons. So with the overpricing of chips and the devaluation of my currency against dolar, it is a no-go for a long time.