Life's Baggage

One thing I have to do this month is copy all of my photo archives from 2021 to Dropbox and memory sticks before erasing them from the computer. I've made this a practice every January because I take hundreds if not thousands of photos every year, and I can't store them all on my hard drive anymore without seriously slowing down the system.

I'm not a great photographer, but I do like looking back at and reusing old pics. What you're seeing in this post are some that I took in January of 2014. Keeping the old ones on Dropbox allows me to access them as easily as if they were still on my hard drive.

My photo archive turned 15 years old this month, and I realized many of the pics are becoming question marks for me. Not this sunset, however. I remember the walk my guy and I took when I snapped it; the weather was biting cold and my hands were numb. Although no one knew it outside my family I was going blind and needed eye surgery, aka my worst nightmare. Publishing had also just kicked me to the curb, so I took a lot of walks in 2014, bracing myself to face the knife, and trying to figure out what should be my next step with my writing if I could still see afterward. Happily the surgery would restore my vision, and I chose the right direction to go as a freelancer.

I still do the same things, too. Here is a pic I snapped of the same spot nine years later.

So what happens to our baggage after we're gone? I doubt my family will even look through this archive before deleting it (I'd love to be wrong, but let's be practical. All of my archives are nothing but question marks to them.) I'm not important enough as a writer for anyone outside my family to take any interest. Maybe after I die my life's work -- which after 25 years of professional writing has grown pretty hefty -- will become wildly popular, but I seriously doubt that.

It sounds a bit depressing, but I'm actually fine with everything gradually disappearing with me. I feel like while I was here I did not waste my time or my talent. I lived my dream, and try as they did, no one could ever take that away from me. That is more than enough.