The usual blame is: You have too many files; You shouldn’t use large images on documents (also you should avoid long filenames, what?); You should use a third party program; You should use icons not thumbnails (even though the issue persists when you do.) So far so much gaslighting, I actually fell for it- well I do have millions of files including little icon files from saved webpages I guess…..

I reached a point yesterday where I broke. And I reinstalled the OS.

I also reached the point I just cried. Three years wasted on this. All I could think was I could have spent more time with my friends and family and Carlo. I could have worked on my actual projects. But this is 20 years of my life at risk. My entire body of work. My future work.

But I found out what it is by doing that, no one can accuse me of installing anything or messing with system files this way.

And now I have to let go of so much anger because it’s actually very simple- if only it was ever admitted to. But it explains the strange error messages like needing admin permission to move a file despite having permission to do so, it leads to error messages that path lengths are too long (even when under 50 characters) it leads to errors that the file is open in another program if you try to delete it.

So I’m going to have to keep dealing with this as the way to avoid it is not best practice.

I’m still behind, I still have to do this work, but I can finally, hopefully, start to be able to dedicate a bit more time with those I love.