Yeah, I was certainly optimistic a couple of weeks ago wasn't I?
This has gotten hard.
Though I keep moving.
I am continuing to upload to Flickr, a month or two at a time, usually after I've had my meal and am finishing watching my TV show. So that is fine.
I have gone through several more packets of printed photos, sorting into "keep", "trash", and "for Mom". The "trash" category is pretty easy for me. Envelopes, negatives, duplicates, blurred, otherwise poor quality, old boyfriends, etc. are in a bag for eventual burn pile.
My own "keep" pile creates a bit more ambivalence though I think I'm doing okay. For any given event, I've usually got a good handful of photos and I'm choosing to toss most and keep the very few that represent the event.
If it's a family event, any I don't want are going in the "Mom" pile.
Quite a few of the packets I'm working through now were developed at Photoworks so I also have a CD with digital versions of the photos. Fortunately, the files on the Photoworks CD's are easily copied JPEG's and can be quickly and directly imported in iPhoto and Flickr.
And as I've said above, the simple physical constraint of fewer photos available on a roll of film instead of the limitless possible photos and videos with my phone, means that there are simply fewer photos in any given month, year, etc.
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I still don't have a good handle on why I'm keeping any of it. Even though for most of it so far I don't even have triggered memories, or triggered emotions, good or bad...I still think there has to be some merit in even just simple documentation.
I can feel or think a certain way about things right now, but I don't know how I'll feel about things like these when/if I live to be 70.
I don't feel a need to keep things for "posterity", for one of my down the line relatives. Or if so, just a couple of photos of myself and a sketched out time line of basic lineage info. If I ever felt like writing about my life any further, well that would be there as well.
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Particularly because I'm not experiencing much emotion or having an experience of reliving these memories, I look at these things and though I know I was there and I know who these people are, there is not much resonance or connection to the images.
And with photos, my photos anyhow, it's all smiles and posed, etc. Of course.
So on one hand, I can look at the photos and it all looks like things were fine.
But I know and remember that things were not all fine. I'm not feeling the emotions anymore, not right now. Why I'm not feeling emotion is a whole other story...
So I save any of these happy looking pictures when I know things were really not happy?
I cannot seem to make some sort of peace with knowing and remembering all my past mistakes and all the past hurts, while also knowing that not every darn thing was 100% bad. It is all tangled together and I really don't know how to work it out.
And it seems like I need to work it out in order to decide which of these things I keep and which I discard.
I'll give an example:
I have several pictures relating to times spent with an ex-bf. Right now they're in the trash bag. ALL of them. Not just of him, but of anything relating to any time spent together.
Some of the times were okay I guess. His friends and his mom were all sweet to me and honestly I enjoyed them most. And I have pictures of them, in trash bag though.
Our relationship though, a complete and total train wreck. He really did some not so nice things.
In addition, and unrelated to this relationship, at that time in my life, I was completely miserable. Family deaths, caregiving, moving, no treatment for mental health...
So I get myself in a little mental muddle. Right now ANY photos related to that relationship, either directly or peripherally, is in the trash bag.
But if that is how I am going to draw the line between "keep" and "go", MOST will go. I doubt I will encounter ANY photo of a situation, event, relationship that is not contaminated somehow with some evidence of unhappiness, poor decision making, dysfunction, etc.
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I'm not saying it would be a bad thing to toss it all. But unlike other categories like clothing, most books, or other material possessions I've sorted, tossing out photos and tokens really is final. There is no going out to a store and finding something that is a useful equivalent.
I wish I was on surer footing is all.
So I get a bit confused as to the "why".