Surviving Hurricane Irma: Where'd I go? : Getting back to work and the steemit community (Hurricane Maria! No!)

So firstly, I want to extend an apology to all of my followers and clients. I have been offline for what seems to be a little over than a week.

But thankfully, My friends and family and myself are all fine.

If you guys haven't caught on already, I do live in central florida. I've lived here for maybe 10 years or more. We've had hurricanes, terrible hurricanes before. Like Katrina, and others that I can't even remember because we have so many.

This particular hurricane was a bit frightening because of it's sheer size. If you guys saw the devastation that went down at those islands towards the British virgin islands.. Words really cannot describe the amount of destruction that they sustained. Houses totally reduced to the cement foundation.

My prayers go out to the people who were trapped in those islands, and all who were unfortunate enough to have lost their lives. My condolences to their friends and families. I am at a loss of words for their tragedy...

The first day I knew that hurricane Irma was going to be hitting Florida, it didn't hit me how serious it could get. Honestly, most Floridians don't take hurricanes seriously, unless you're living on Florida's coastline. I kept hoping that it would just veer off into the Atlantic ocean and continue doing my thing. Unfortunately, it just kept coming.

By the time I knew that we'd be getting a hurricane without a doubt, my first instinct was to wait it out. I attempted to purchase some canned goods, water, and some candles.

Unfortunately, completely empty. I mean, really everything was gone from the shelves. I was so looking forward to breaking my ramen noodle diet too, but all the canned goods, peanut butter, non-perishables were cleaned out. You couldn't find any water either.

When we started seeing and hearing the effects of Irma, it was quite frightening. The power immediately went out. Which was seriously bad for me. As some of you know I make my living off doing graphics design commissions, selling t-shirts, and writing steemit posts. The hurricane completely cut me off.

The first thing you notice while sitting out this hurricane was how loud the wind was. The howling of the wind was extremely loud. There were occasional crashes as trees fell over and branches and debris hitting the houses. Very frightening evening.

When the storm subsided I was able to book a hotel room with 4 other family members. Fortunately for me, I was able to get a loan from my best friend @someguy123. It was pretty tough though, sharing 2 queen size beds with 5 people. We basically had to sleep in shifts. Internet connection was also very bad, wifi connections went in and out, probably from congestion in the network.

Cellphone signals were on and off. Most likely due to damage sustained through the storm.

By day 5, I was extremely tired, and already becoming broke from having to eat at fast food restaurants. Finally, after 6 days, power was restored to my neighborhood.

I took some pictures of the damage around the neighborhood.

I took pictures of my neighborhood. The damage was pretty intense, but thankfully, no reported deaths in my area.

Approaching my neighborhood, you can actually see the countless piles of debris from trees and branches being blown over.

Here's the damage from the gas station just on the corner of my neighborhood. The wind was so strong, it managed to pry and bend the actual roofing for the gas. I know it just looks like just a gas station roof knocked over, but we were very lucky that there wasn't an explosion, that would have really taken a toll. So thank god it wasn't worse.

Here's a picture of my local cemetery, and yes, there were some gravestones that had sustained damage. Trees that have been around for decades, completely torn asunder and thrown around. Imagine the biggest tree you know of right now, now image that tree being blown so hard it snaps down the middle. Terrifying. Hold that thought.

Here's a neighbor's yard, trees have been literally picked up, and thrown into his yard fencing. Now I don't know them personally, but I can tell that they really must have been terrified during the hurricane.

Here's someone's home just on the corner of my street. A massive tree, just being tossed right into the roof of the home. Thank god it was only a category 2, otherwise, I really think things would be worse... Much worse.

Scenes like this all over my neighborhood. Our backyards, our neighbor's yards. Just around the block. There's just nothing but debris from trees or fencing or both. It frightens me how lucky we were to come out of this with just power off for a week.

For my protection and safety, I have not enclosed pictures of my actual property, but we have a huge tree, completely tipped to the side, roots exposed, right into our metal fence, which has pretty much destroyed it.

Without a doubt, a frightening experience, and unpleasant. Though, I consider myself blessed, as no real damage was actually sustained, and compared to people on the coastline or islands, what I've gone through is nothing. I want to wish blessings out to everyone who was out there, and hope recovery will be swift.

So, this is the reason why my content has been put on hold, and why I have no been able to make progress on any of my commissions, and I honestly apologize for that.

I'm going to be playing catchup for a lot of this work, but I will be starting up the regular content again. And hurricane Maria is around the corner, so I'm hoping to get my major commissions done before that hits us.

Guys, as of writing this, I am totally exhausted, worried and totally behind on everything. I would appreciate any donations to help me out through this time, anything helps. Even a simple re-steem or upvote goes a long way. All funds and proceeds will be going to helping me buy food, pay rent, and assisting me if I need to evacuate in a life-threatening event.

I have a long road to getting back on track and getting my content back up and going, but I really have some good ideas of what I want to do.

I want to thank you guys for supporting me through this hard time, as we transition into the next hurricane, Hurricane Maria. Which I pray will move towards the Atlantic and off the path to the islands and Florida keys.

Oh and one more thing, I finally broke up with my girlfriend on the 7th. So, that happened. I'll write a blog about that soon in the future.

Thanks again guys for being awesome, and I hope you guys found some insight as to where I am and why I'm not posting like I used to, I do aim to change that.