Who says our photos and videos and music take up less space than they use to? I say it takes up more (in my head) and has become more of a bother to organize. Maybe I’m just not doing it right. Before the digital age punched me in the mouth in the year 2000, everything had its place.
Music was on a cd in a case on a shelf, alphabetized easily accessible. When a new addition came along, I simply found its appropriate spot and slid it in. Images were on negative and slides. Said negatives and slides were sleeved, labeled and placed in a brown manila envelope and filed in a cabinet. If I wanted a print, I made it or sent it out to be printed. Then upon receiving the print, I placed it in the appropriate photo album. Those albums lived as a keepsake on a self with easy access.
Then one day we all decided to digitize that media. Cool, everything will be right there on my computer. That task was beyond tedious! It took years to complete. Yet it’s a task that remains incomplete. My problem with digitizing my life is that I am a visual person. If I don’t see something, I don’t consider it or think about it or whatever. The extra space I have gained in my living quarters has become brain matter lost.
The struggle becomes recalling the image or song that you have taken off the shelf and filed away in the abyss that is a computer. As we age we lose that ability gradually to recall that information. Having visual clues surrounding us, such as photo albums and artwork and music in CD or record form, I think keeps our minds sharp!
Who of us has said in any real serious way… “I am gonna get on my computer and look at pictures to reminisce while I listen to my ipod.” Ok, sure, maybe I’ve done it. But it still seems to be a foreign practice and not at all a healthy one, for my mind anyway. Living through such a drastic change in my life has a had more of an impact on me than I thought.
When I was younger, I loved flipping through family albums, while listening to my favorite music. It was a mini event to help remind me of good times, that now makes me feel silly when I flip through old photos on my phone that I have digitized. It doesn’t at all have the same soothing, medicinal feeling.
Now…in what folder on my computer did I put those 200 images that I took at the Zoo this summer? Ugh!
Oh! Below is photo I found of Jack, while reminiscing/organizing with my computer…
I love the look on Jack's face when he sees his new cowboy sheriff Pajamas © 2010 Todd Stringer
