September 2020: The Peculiar Sensation of Watching Yourself Grow Up

Hi. It’s time for an old-school Ariel blog post.

So, let’s just say I’m not doing well. You probably noticed that on this blog by now. This is ostensibly a cheerful little travel blog and each monthly update I sound more despairing.

Well, I’ve got good reasons, I guess. Pretty much everyone in my family got diagnosed with COVID this week. They’re okay so far, but I’m worried. Also I’m going through a rough break-up. One that’s rougher than it has any right to be. And, honestly, the past few months have just been shit for my mental health.

Don’t worry, though. I fiiiinnally started therapy. I’ve been practicing mindfulness. I’m making an effort to create art and get out of the house.

So, in pursuit of doing anything at all, this past month I decided to take on a project I’d been meaning to do for years and years. In the name of digital minimalism, I wanted to FINALLY comb through the 18,000 photos on my phone and delete the ones I don’t need.

But wait, what counts as “need”? Is it worth keeping this picture of a gas station meal long since eaten? This screenshot from a fight with my dad, do I “need” it? What about all these memes?

I took a class my last semester in college, Digital Archives. It dealt with how we organize collections and assign metadata. Honestly, I don’t remember much of it. It was in context of libraries and museums. But I tried to think, if I treat my photo collection as a little museum of my adult life, what do I want in there? How do I want it sorted?

Look, I can barely remember the difference between method and methodology. So you can be assured I came up with only the most professional, academic system—if it felt right, I kept it.

What does that mean, exactly? Hell if I know. I guess I tried to judge what’s worth keeping by whatever I’d find interesting when I’m 50 and I’ve forgotten the details of my grief or wonder or whatever.

I just guessed at the worth of each memory. Cause that’s the thing—these weren’t just photos. They’re basically representations of my memories. Memory on its own is vague and unreliable. Often, how we build the narratives of what happened is by what’s physically left to us.

Or, in this case, digitally left.

So I decided to scrap most of my shitty twitter memes, except only those that still made me laugh. I threw out all duplicates, of course. And the blurry aftershots or dozens of selfie-outtakes. I kept some things I don’t “need” to remember—pictures of people no longer in my life, or a mundane shot of something here in Korea. I also trashed things I could’ve easily kept, and maybe should’ve: old recipes, bits of encouragement, and the like.

I then painstakingly added each photo to an album sorted by a rough time frame—high school, college, Korea Year 1, Year 2, etc. I also made specific albums for outfit pics, food, and every ugly photos my best friend has ever sent me. For some photos, I also added searchable keywords.

As I poured over thousands and thousands of photos, I revisited in detail the past ten years of my life. It really felt like time traveling. I watched my best friend and I grow up together. I watched my journey as an artist. I watched two relationships begin and end. I revisited the last photos with loved ones (which at the time we had no idea would be the last). All of high school, all of college, all of Korea—summarized into little bite sized pieces. Even a simple selfie had a story behind it. A picture, a thousand words. You know what they say.

Watching my life’s little highlight reel humbled me. It made me grateful. It made me wistful and a little lonely. It did a million things to me, and I had to take breaks often because I just kept crying.

It also challenged so much of what I had assumed to be true. For example, I’ve been feeling insecure lately, wondering if I’ve gained weight. After seeing hundreds of photos of myself spanning my entire adult life, I’ve watched my body go through alllllll sorts of changes. Weight fluctuations that seemed massive to me at the time aren’t that noticeable over the span of years. Sure, I watched my hair get shorter and blonder and curlier. I can see how my face lost a little bit of baby fat, and gained a few fine lines when I smile. I worked off some pounds a few years back, but I still looked like present-me the whole time. I realized how much my body is just…mine, even when it feels alien.

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say except that I feel a bit clearer with having 10,000 fewer photos, and those remaining sorted into albums for easier viewing. I also bought an HDD to finally put all my photos and art in a storage location a bit more…tangible, for lack of a better word, than the cloud.

I recommend doing this if you have the time and the will. I thought this would just be a lil housekeeping project. I wasn’t prepared to see how much—and how little—has changed.