2021-06-17
I'm Keeping All My Memories

I’M KEEPING ALL MY MEMORIES

Every once a while, I am paralyzed by my responsibilities and aspirations. So much so, I have to stop, take a breath, and decide which direction to go in. After a mere moment, I often think, “Just pick something and plow forward. For any small task done, is a step in the right direction.”

In the same vein, my indecisiveness is my own damn fault. Too much on my plate is often a function of having too many plates. As I’ve admitted before, I’m a somewhat of a hoarder. It’s simply hard for me to let go, especially if it’s materially immaterial.

In other words, I’m keeping all my memories. Albeit they’re all tied up and only accesible via secret passages and passwords on zip drives, backup drives, old PCs and macs and laptops, cassette tapes, CD ROMs, thumb drives, and even ancient notebooks, written when people used to “handwrite” using paper and pencils. Not to mention, the hundreds of framed photos now stored in boxes in the shed, along with stacks of priceless art and notes from my children.

As a writer, it’s the hardest thing to let go. For I just know, that someday, in some way or another, I’ll want to know, where was I? And when? Who did what and how? Why?

All the answers are in there. So it behooves me not to throw them away. Tuck them away maybe, bury them even, but it would be a sin to discard. Especially since my internal drive has never worked as well as all the external ones.

This might explain why I’m a writer. For whether it’s etched in stone or stored as bits and bytes, I know I won’t have to rely on my lifelong shoddy memory to tell the story.

Likewise, that’s why I’ve taken hundreds of thousands of photos. For each picture relays a story that I might never get to tell otherwise.

And God knows I love to tell stories.