I'm stuck.
Somewhere between 1982 and 2012 everything changed (I know, where was I that I just noticed this?!!). Back in 1982, my mom would call her family every now and again long-distance, would write letters and stick them in the mail, and published a "family newsletter" using a typewriter and carbon paper. She did her family history (oops, pardon, her genealogy, which you still got to call it back then) using a Book of Remembrance. And she "scrapbooked" with magnetic paged photo albums. Which, though they are going to burn through the photos in the next 200 years, are seriously easy to stick photos into. But the point is, everything she did is documented.
Now I'm in 2012, and I use my cell phone and email to keep in touch with my family. And despite the proliferation of information, there's really no permanent record of those interactions.
So here I sit hyperventilating because despite alllll the choices I have to permanently record my family life, I'm really choosing none of them. Or maybe I'm choosing all of them, but only occasionally. Sometimes I write in my journal. Sometimes I blog. Sometimes I post things on facebook (but how are my great-great-grandchildren ever going to see my facebook activity? Ugh, and to think that facebook would even be part of my permanent legacy *shudders*). Sometimes I print out pictures and stick them in an album. Sometimes I stick programs and such into white binders for our families.
But I just want one nice way to have everything all together! So tonight it's going to be blogger. Yes, I will put things on my blog, and print it out and call it good. Yesterday I was going to digitally scrapbook everything. Yes, I will re-sort through the 24,000 pictures on my computer and neatly organize them into a scrapbook (but which software to use? And who will print them? And do I put them in a book, or in a scrapbook?!). And on.
So...how do the rest of you document and organize your lives? Maybe it's pregnancy talking, but the most important part of my will right now is making sure that my little sister Dagny knows she's in charge of putting all my photos together for my children if I die before I ever make this decision....
When you figure it out, please let me know! We have a combination of scrapbooks, partial scrapbooks, and LOTS of photos (and negatives) in boxes (back in the day when we got prints developed) and now on the computer (since the digital age). We're thinking of trying to make one of those Snapfish photo albums of 2011 family happenings (when I have the time to put one together).
ReplyDeleteI also have collections of artwork and letters in various places (file folders, boxes, and stored on the computer) and don't really know how to incorporate them with all the photos.
I'm right there with you. I started the scrapbooking with all the kids' books and our big family one, but by the time Noah came around I stopped, so he only has his first year scrapbooked(poor Bella and Piper don't even have a page). I need to do this and reading your post has put a new fire under me to continue with it as soon as our stand event is over. Thanks for the reminder and push-although, I think it will be in a published book and not hand-scrapped like the others. Doing it by hand costs me more and takes me more time.
ReplyDeleteEmmy!!! How come I didn't know that you started a new blog? It's not like I don't talk to you nearly EVERY DAY!! Anyway, I will be reading it now that it will update on my reader. And, I have the same concerns. I haven't been keeping a journal because I need to go buy a really nice one (although I have 5 half started ones already) and I should just do it on the computer. Don't want to write things too personal on the blog, but just keeping up with that is hard enough. Anyway, whatever. Too much to think about right now.
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