Why I’m Writing: Mar. 2019 Update

I’m now 16 months into this website / journal / project and figure it’s a decent time to report my current thoughts. This is an update on my very first post, Why I’m Writing. I’m glad to say the site is starting to take shape the way I wanted, and I find working on it both enjoyable and therapeutic.

Mechanically, WordPress upgraded a few months ago to a frame format that makes it easier to handle photos in little mini-galleries. This has made creating and updating posts much easier and hopefully more readable. I’ve got some posts in the older format that I may update over time. I was pleased to be able to update the Memories from 1984 post in just a few minutes.

I was able to add a static home page that helps organize the site and hopefully makes it easier for the reader to navigate. Allie helped me with a header graphic that I think I can modify when I want in the future.

The main organizing thread for the site is becoming the family albums and photos that form a timeline of my life. This is what I had in mind when I started, nicely reinforced by thoughts on timelines sparked during my trip to Lisbon last year. I would like to have a more graphical representation of the timeline, and may eventually make the family album timeline stand out more distinctly as the driving metaphor for the site.
I’d like to be able to incorporate other timelines (e.g., politics, world and local history, movies, music) into the flow so I can more readily see how one thing influences another. These connections and alternate perspectives fascinate me.
As of this writing, I have about 90 posts and have included albums up to 1984. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m finding I can move more quickly through albums now that I have a format to work with.
I’ve got several major mountains ahead of me that will take some considerable time. Our 1988 China trip fills two very dense albums that will be a challenge, but at least they are already organized. I’ve found boxes and boxes of old photos in the attic that are not organized and I haven’t cracked yet…but I now know where they are. I’m pleased to have at least looked into my steamer trunk of old memorabilia and touched on some of the things in there, though there’s a lot more to deal with. In general, tackling the era with Allie, especially when we start to have a much greater volume of digital photos, will take a lot of time. For these reasons, even the existing posts/albums will have more to add. I now recognize that almost every post is a work in process, subject to revisions and additions. That’s very different than a regular blog, and makes things very difficult for a reader/consumer.
I’d like to start incorporating pages on individuals, sort of like the pages I’ve started doing of pets. It would be nicer if this was easier, something like tags for the photos, not just categories for the posts. Maybe there’s a widget. That said, I’m leery of doing pages and comments on living individuals. I’ve already found that people look immediately for comments about themselves and tend to take any negative or ambiguous comments the wrong way. Egos are powerful, fragile things. I find I’m already editing myself to be careful with comments about individuals. Likewise, I’m worried that if I only do dead people it will feel like obituaries. Still, it seems like there should be a way to gather photos, thoughts and remembrances of any individual if you want to drill down that thread.

A journal like this feels so universal that there should be a toolkit to make it easier. It’s a market waiting to be met. I’ve recently discovered a galaxy of sites and tools to help with genealogies (example1, example2). I need to take a closer look to see what useful concepts I can incorporate. It’s kind of a spinoff of that, but different…not just people-based, but time-based with events both personal and more general topics.
I’ve spent a lot of time and detail on travels. There may be too much detail, but I’m finding it helpful to process the value and personal importance of what I’ve seen. Partly I’m trying to be a better, more mindful consumer, not just a superficial tourist.
My audience to date is just three: me (the primary consumer, so far), Laurie and Allie. Laurie has given useful, positive feedback which I greatly appreciate. Allie just recently helped with the homepage and refreshed her login, and it was nice to see her enjoying some posts at home last weekend. I think Allie will someday more greatly appreciate this reservoir of family stories, photos and observation, and I am grateful that she has made positive noises so far even if she hasn’t actually read much of it.
Barb has shown no interest in the site so far, despite a few invitations. This is probably a good decision on her part. I can respect her unwillingness to commit the time to read it, and am worried about getting her feedback. Negative feedback would be difficult to take; positive feedback may seem gratuitous. Mostly she has been tolerant of the time I’m putting into this, and for that I’m grateful. Only sometimes she has admonished me to spend more time dealing with the real world of cleaning up the house or doing other more productive tasks.
I’m not ready to expand the audience yet, though I’m getting closer. I think there’s a natural next circle of other family members and some close friends, but I feel like the site is only just starting to take shape. I think I need to get through more of the albums and start tackling the boxes of photos before this is really ready to share further.
Early in this effort, about a year ago now, we had dinner with our friends, Rick and Faith. I tried spelling out what I was doing with my time, hoping not to get crushed by Barb or Rick. They were kindly silent. Faith, to her credit, was supportive, saying that she was sure that whatever I set my mind to would be positive in the long run. They were kind words, and I’ve clung to them. A little sprinkling of positive reinforcement can go a long way. That may be the best lesson I’ve learned in this whole process.
Though it may seem this site is a kitchen sink of all my thoughts and memories, I find that I am editing out certain stories and episodes that I find embarrassing, rude, insulting or otherwise unpleasant. Does that make this journal less honest? Maybe. Honesty is not really the goal. I’ll admit I’m trying to paint a mostly positive picture of a life, the way I want to remember things, and things I want remembered. I think that’s the author’s prerogative. I’m the one taking the time to do this, so you’ll get my preferred perspective. I think that’s fair.
Some folks (some I know) spend time and money with therapists to process episodes of their life. I think that’s valid and healthy and I don’t begrudge them that option. I’m pleased to find this exercise of wading through memories and photos to be therapeutic in its own way. I’m beginning to recognize an unexpected benefit of dredging up and processing these memories. I feel healthier. It’s almost like physical exercise, I suppose, though I’ve never had a positive attitude toward physical exercise.

Update to the update, a few weeks later.

Barb was kind enough to get me a new iPhone 8+ for my birthday. In preparing for this event, I backed up my old iPhone to both iCloud and my Vaio laptop, once again encountering confusion and frustration that my music, photos and documents were not properly sync’d between my phone, laptops and desktop computers. This had been going on for years and I finally reached my breaking point.

The next day, I spent several hours at the AT&T store getting my new iPhone activated and loaded with the contents of my old phone. That was a relatively painless process but I was happy to be guided by the AT&T rep. We also took time to prep my old iPhone for Barb to use — that actually took longer than activating my new phone.

I asked the rep about getting my data sync’d between computers and he suggested taking them to Apple Genius Bar. Once I was back home, I tried to set up an appointment and found that I couldn’t set one for a software issue. Instead, I called Apple Support and was surprised that I only had to wait a couple of minutes to talk to a real human. Over the next couple of hours, he walked me through getting my iTunes music sync’d between the Vaio (which had a lot of my old music) and my iPhone. He tried to explain the distinction between music I previously bought through iTunes, music I’d ripped from CDs, “stolen” via older file sharing services (remember Napster, anyone?) and the songs I’d “favorited” or downloaded through my Apple Music subscription. That discussion will someday make for another post.

After satisfactorily getting the music sync’d (he had to get control of my laptop and fix a setting that I never would have found), we turned to the issue of photos. He was able to sync my iCloud photos between the iPhone and Vaio, but when we looked into uploading the vast number of older photos on the Vaio it became clear that I would need more than my 50Gb iCloud storage level.

Google Photos, which I’ve found to be an easier interface to navigate, offers unlimited photo storage. So I finally decided to consolidate my photos into Google Photos. I’m still in the midst of that process…it takes more than an hour to upload each year’s worth of photos, organized into albums. I think once that’s done, I should go back and organize my other photos into albums as well.

I spell out all this detail partly to relate just how cumbersome all this still is, and to point out the need for a much cleaner solution to storing and organizing one’s digital stuff. Also to reflect once again on how totally we are giving our lives over to the various tech giants; they own our digital souls. I was insidiously reminded of this recently by a message on my phone from Apple regarding a compendium of photos it had automatically made for me: “You have a new memory!” If you say so. In another decade (or two or three) will I be able to tell which memories are actually mine and which are helpfully constructed by Google or Apple?

This problem will grow exponentially in the future; smartphones are just over a decade old; photos are getting denser and multilayered, eating up more space; videos, which I do rarely, are becoming ever more ubiquitous. You can see why Google, Amazon and others are investing in their mind-blowing data centers and server farms. What will happen the day we can’t access our data or get to the Internet in general? We’re already nearly helpless when the electricity goes out. I wonder if I would last a week? Probably not much longer than that.

And another update, in April…

It occurs to me that what I’m working on might be called a “digital biography.” A search on the term yields precious little. There’s a 2010 academic paper by Australian Professor Paul Longley that does a good job capturing the concept and some pros and cons, which subsequently led to 2015 Conference with further papers on related topics. There’s what appears to be an abortive company, Your Digital Biography, that describes the problem accurately but its solution is an inadequate DVD video. After that are a few scattered individual efforts. It’s an open field. Others have seen and described the problem but I’m not seeing anything approaching even the baby steps project I’ve begun. There’s got to be more out there.

Leave a Comment Cancel