Reimagining Your Personal History By Throwing Some Of It Away
I believe I’ve spoken about my penchant for “scrapbooking” here in this blogspace before; I recall telling the story of my first attempt, at age 10, to put together a scrapbook of old photos by using Elmer’s glue to affix them to the paper pages…not an awesome idea (or outcome). Anyway, after salvaging some of the surviving photos from that debacle and placing them correctly on sticky pages behind clear covers, I began what would be a 45 year scrapbooking adventure. I saved cool stuff (first place ribbons, concert ticket stubs, letters from relatives), and I saved weird stuff (parking ticket receipts, a lock of a former girlfriend’s hair she made into a “J” shape). I literally created a photographic/object journey of my life from age 10 to age 55. Then, quite abruptly, I made a conscious decision to stop collecting “stuff” in scrapbooks after my Father passed away in 2020, thus ending my scrapbooking career. Also, the advent of digital photos (and digital storage) made any pictures I had from, say, 2005 forward sort of irrelevant since I had digital versions. Heck, I have most of my life history in photos on my Smartphone! So…I went through all 40+ scrapbook volumes, keeping truly important historical goodies and throwing away multiple pages of bad poetry, obscure political pamphlets and college-era girlfriend love notes. My reasoning (besides making a ton of room in our hall closet) is simple: when my adult kids – or their kids – comb through my dusty scrapbook history, they don’t need to see every crazy, nonsensical, drinking-inspired memento of my early adulthood. If my family wants to know what a night in The Long Beach Harbor Boat Parade feels like wearing nothing but a clown wig and a Speedo, they can just ask me 🙂