The third in the series of updates on the structure and background of this site. See my original post, “Why I’m Writing” from November 2017 and the first update from March 2019.
I’m now three years into this project and figured it’s time for a status check on where things stand with this site. I’m generally pleased with how it’s developed and still very much enjoy working on it. I still have a lot of ideas of how I’d like to see it develop and will need several more years to get through the backlog of photos and other memorabilia I want to include. It keeps me busy. I warn you I haven’t even cracked into the boxes of old photos (that didn’t make it into albums) in our attic.
At the moment, I’m working on posts for 2005 family photos, my financial background and Planning Coach interlude, part 10 of my coronavirus journal, and I’m lagging behind on cultural memories for 1977-1978. I’ve digitized all our old albums and am now working with digital photos starting from 2003. It’s an easier process but there are a lot more digital photos to go through.
I’ve shared the site with a number of family members at this point: Allie, Laurie, Sue, Len, Maggie, Betsy, Joe, Sara and Kristen. I’ve received a number of kind comments, each of which is a welcome dose of encouragement. I don’t think I’ve engaged anyone as regular readers, but that’s ok. I hope people start to get a little familiar with the site and maybe it becomes a family resource they can access in their own time according to their own interests.
Barb is still not a subscriber, though I’ve offered now and then, but she does read over my shoulder from time to time. She particularly enjoys walking by and seeing the old photos — a selection of our greatest hits are the running screensaver on our main computer. She continues to indulge me in this effort and I think views it as not entirely a waste of time.
The Family page, which is structured around a timeline of our photos, is still the dominant metaphor and driver for this site. In my mind, the other pages flow along parallel and intertwined with the family story. I think I need to make those linkages more explicit and may go back through the posts to tie them to one another, at the risk of making things more confusing.
Earlier this year I stumbled onto the album put together by Barb’s grandmother, Helen, which opened a trapdoor of research into family genealogies. I added a number of posts and links on the Family page which maybe clutters things up a little but seems like a useful prelude to the start of my life and the main thread of this site. I could go a lot further into family genealogy but don’t feel like I have the time or interest yet. I left some breadcrumbs for the future, for me or for someone.
We have two albums that I thought covered Barb’s youth but they turned out to be somewhat cannibalized and only cover a short period. I think I need to sit down with Betsy to get a better handle on the Fisher girls’ youth and family history. Perhaps I can mine some of her photos when we visit them in July 2021 or maybe it’s a good excuse for some future trips. I know I’ve given the Fisher side of the story short shrift so far and would like to include more. It’s been hard to get Barb’s attention or interest to delve into family history. Maybe after she retires in a couple of years.
As a separate but adjacent effort from this site, I started in July 2019 to try my hand at a running journal. I keep it in Google docs organized quarterly and it has become a useful discipline and habit. I don’t write daily but usually twice a week or so. I have in mind incorporating the journal entries somehow once I get up to 2019 in the family thread.
When the coronavirus hit in March 2020 I started excerpting my journal entries for monthly posts on this site. I’m up to 10 months now. I’d like to stop but the virus goes on. I’m looking forward to getting to the point where I can look back on the whole experience and offer some summary and maybe some insight.
I’m coming to the conclusion that, in general, I want to add a section of Lessons Learned as a way to gather life lessons and make more sense of things. Just thinking about it feels a little pretentious but I hope it will prove a useful exercise for myself, and maybe for others. I have in mind going back and making sort of sidebar comments in posts (maybe in a different background or something) and then collecting them in a separate category of posts. This can tie into an effort to make the linkages between different sections more explicit. It takes time away, however, from adding new posts and I’m torn a bit on how and when to tackle it all.
I still believe this overall site is a useful exercise and something that will become more common and automated as time goes on. Someone is going to make millions of dollars off the human urge to collect, catalog and securely share memories. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to be me. But maybe this effort will be something of a template.
I’ve just gone through the exercise of updating our wills and estate plan. The attorneys include a stub of a concept of digital legacy which has started me thinking about how to preserve this site after I’m gone. I don’t actually have a complete answer yet but I do want to guarantee it lives for a few generations after me, at least. More to come on that, I guess. I hope.
I say bravo for your efforts, Bill. And I’m inspired by them even as I feel humbled by my own inattention to recording my own perspectives on personal/family history. I especially like the idea that you are leaving this digital legacy for generations to come. Your reflections on what it all means to you at this moment are great–I love that you include the articles you’re reading, the shows you’re seeing, the books you’re reading, as ways of seeing how you’re forming your opinions and your knowledge base. It’s all very impressive, and I have the feeling that this record can be important in more ways than we can imagine now. I love that you’re doing this and I’m glad you have the time and the motivation to pull it all together. I wish I could say the same for myself!!!