I’m a memory hoarder. I always have been. Since I was a kid, I would waste my time documenting my life as accurately and thoroughly as possible. I didn’t want to forget.
Here’s the paradox: one of my big fears is having too much evidence of my life when I pass. But in classic wishful thinking, I imagine I’ll be able to control what evidence remains before I go, as if I’ll get some final edit to curate the archive before the lights go out. That’s a future me problem to resolve.
As soon as I could write, I started carrying a journal and pen with me everywhere. At 15, I picked up a film camera and was never without one again. At 26, I got my first video camera, and with it, came another way of documentation.
I’m scared of forgetting, it seems. I’m worried life will pass me by and I won’t remember who touched me, what made me feel a certain way, or how I became the way I am. The thing is, I’ve forgotten so much still and lost some of my documentation along the way.
In 2027, I’ve resolved myself to cleaning up my hard drives. I can’t tell you how many blurry or out-of-focus images I have in my folders where I can’t even tell who I was taking a picture of. I’ve lost files due to corrupt external hard drives or simply from my lack of organization. There’s a lot of excavation to do.
I’ve been scared to edit it down, intentionally, worried it’ll give me a censored version of my life. And of my photography skills.
If I only keep my favorite things, how accurate of a portrayal of my life could this collection of scraps possibly be? Won’t I just be left with highlights album that smoothes over all the messy, forgettable moments that actually make up a very human life?
However, I need to get organized, and I want to document my reflections as I go.
So this is a digital diary of me cleaning house.
A record of sorting through the records.
Maybe in organizing the evidence, I’ll figure out what I’m really afraid of losing.