Excuse the lack of posting last week (and the dumb title to this one - I need to work on better titles). In addition to making an effort to stay away from fluffy or mundane topics, I was working on a project that took a little longer than anticipated. In fact, it's still not quite finished. It has to do with organizing pictures. By pictures, yes I mean actual printed photos. Does anyone else still do this?
When I was younger - high school and my first year or so of college - I schlepped my camera everywhere. I have cute pictures with witty, and sometimes not so witty, captions next to them. For the next few years, until I got a digital camera, I wasn't so good about taking snapshots. Fortunately I still have a few good ones taken by others during that time period, and being tagged in Facebook photos has helped fill in some more gaps.
In any case, a couple of weeks ago I decided that since it had been several years (several as in over 6) since I'd put printed photos into an album, I really wanted to take the time to go through old pictures. I sorted through prints and digital images, pulled pictures off of Facebook, spent several hours uploading photos to Walgreens.com, and finally placed a fairly large order. I then spent the second half of the Superbowl getting most of my prints into an album rather than paying attention to any of the game or commercials. I'm still not done, but I'm close.
Going through this process, a couple of things have occurred to me. First, is it strange that I have this need to actually put together albums, or have something tangible? And second, is it strange that now that I'm single again, I've made certain memories my own?
On the subject of needing to have something tangible, I guess a similar example involves reading books. Despite living in the age of online newspapers and e-readers, I still prefer picking up an actual book. To that end, I've found myself justifying book purchases in recent years by rationalizing that if we want publishers to keep printing books, someone has to keep buying them. When it comes to e-readers, and maybe this is because I don't own a Kindle I just use the app on my phone, there's something about not being able to flip pages of a book back and forth that almost detracts from the experience of reading for me. I'm hoping that during my lifetime print media and photo albums don't go away completely.
On the subject of making memories my own, given my updated relationship status I've taken my ex out of the equation which means I have literally taken him out of the pictures. I'm wondering whether or not that's too weird, though. There were some great trips we took or good times we had with friends together that I'd like to have photos of simply because, relationship aside, there are several moments that made me happy. I had pictures from moments in time like that printed and I added them to my album. Similarly, on my former blog I did several posts from the November 2009 trip to Europe we took together, and last week ended up making prints of several of those images.
Now, none of the prints I had made included pictures of him, which I think anyone would agree makes sense, but is that weird? We did take the trip together, but so many of the things we did I enjoyed and would have done anyway - the butterfly house, the cemetery in Vienna, the zoo, the Stiegl brewery. Still, if I'm looking through the albums later with a love interest, it's eventually going to come out that I went on this trip with my ex-husband. I imagine that these instances will have a similar degree of awkwardness to the times now I make mention of having lived in Italy. Anyone who doesn't know asks, "Wow, what took you to Italy?" to which my answer starts off with , "Well..."
So again, is it strange that I'm including these pictures knowing that I'll probably have to explain myself? Being 32 and divorced has the potential to scare people off, which makes me nervous - should I be?
I guess the most important question involves whether or not having this level of detachment is healthy. My inclination is to say that it is, but is that normal or does it make me a freakishly cold person? Throughout my life I've made it a point to do whatever grieving I need to, but then focus on the good things and the happy memories. I'm sure losing my dad earlier in life had a lot to do with that. Last year was tougher, but I made it through and ended up in a much better place. Will other people recognize this? Should I care?
That's my food for thought this week. Until next time...
1 comment:
ok, since this is a 'heavy' blog post (since you're not writing light and fluffy) are your questions rhetorical or are you actually looking for an answer?
I think that if there was something really great that you and T did together that keeping him in the shot is a good idea. however, since you might feel differently about this in, say, 10 years, the fact that you can always go back and add him in shouldn't make you feel overly inclined to add him now.
you're not freakishly cold. and no, i'm not just saying that.
Lastly, i too prefer physical books.
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