Tackling a Long Neglected Task

On Thursday afternoon I had a major breakthrough.  I finally started to tackle the huge bag of photographs that have sat awaiting my attention for over 3 years now.  I've had it on my yearly goal list for at least the last  two or three years, but have just never felt that I had the emotional energy to tackle it.

There's something about photographs and looking back into the past that I find difficult to negotiate.  Perhaps, because I've had my fair share of sadness and difficult times over the years, (like most people) photographs seem to trigger quite unpleasant memories and so I've taken the approach of avoiding them.

However, after my friend died I got to thinking how I was lucky to be able to look back over our lives and I started to take a look at some photographs the other week.  The experience wasn't actually as upsetting as I thought it was going to be, so when I got a sudden urge to just get on with the job of sorting through them on Thursday afternoon, I decided to just dig in and get on with it. I was glad I did.

I started by taking a look at the albums I'd already collated and finding the ones that weren't completed.  I then completed these and then decided which new albums I want to create from the photographs we have.

I decided to create different albums for different subjects, namely a family album of my own family from childhood to the present, a family album of our joint family, a baby album and a toddler to ten album of my daughter, a holiday album and I'm considering a small album of photos of the houses we've lived in and my allotments. Once completed this will mean that the physical photos have been taken care of.

I also filled a few frames that I've had for years but never used with photographs that I like and put them up around the house. There are some physical photos in our collection that I won't be keeping and I may try to return some to appropriate people in the family eventually.

From about the time of my daughter being 5 or 6, most of our photos have been stored digitally, so I aim to tackle these at some point and put them onto CD's or a memory stick to be stored with the albums.

I probably sound like a bit of a dinosaur, as most people are putting CD's and physical photographs online now, but I'm happy to keep actual photographs to look through, as  I can't honestly completely trust computers, having lost lots of photos over the last couple of years through computer malfunction. Besides, who knows what will happen with computers in the future.  Call me old fashioned, and I'll say yes, I probably am.

Anyway, I spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening on the task and I've got quite a lot done. I had to stop because I ran out of transparent photo corners to complete the last couple of albums. I ordered some on eBay today to finish the job. I also need a couple more small inexpensive albums, which I'm going to look out for in the next few weeks. I'm hoping it won't be another 3 years before I get around to finishing the job.