relics.

i've always been a picture person - it's rare that an event will happen and i won't have my camera around to document it. lately, with the holidays and whatnot, i've been snapping more pictures than usual, and so all i've been hearing is "you have to post the pics!". meaning on facebook. which is just so interesting how things have evolved that now that phrase has become the standard when discussing photo sharing (although i rather wish that it didn't, and so i still share all the photos via email, which is redundant, but more meaningful to me than just tagging everyone for the world to see).

and so the other day as i was posting up the latest reminders of recent good times, i looked over at my photo albums - of which i have an entire bookshelf (11 albums; 2 are empty awaiting the photos i have from Feb 2007 - present to stuff inside of them) of just ones from college and after, as anything pre-college is at our parents' house (i wasn't kidding when i said i am a picture person) - and wondered what is to become of them. it really wasn't so long ago that i was still eagerly waiting for my photos to be developed from CVS (always paying extra for one-hour service since i was just that impatient). then i was sending them around via photo-sharing websites, but still printing out copies for my albums. and now i'm nearly two years behind - goodness knows how many that means i need to print out. the limit for any outing used to be 24 pictures, since that was all we had room for on the roll - now i actually almost filled an entire album JUST with photos from my 26th birthday (granted it was a disco party, a glittery affair, which in our opinion warranted 100's of photos...but still). so i guess it's impossible for our leather-bound memory-keepers of finite space to keep up in the digital age, but i feel completely saddened at the thought of only looking at my photos on a computer for the rest of eternity. i'm thinking i'm not going to be able to do it - that connection you feel to a person/place/event when you're physically holding a photograph is something that i never want to give up.

******

so today is my two-month unemployment anniversary. which is crazy as i feel like it all just happened yesterday. on the flip side, part of me has completely forgotten what it is like to have an office to go to every weekday, and so i feel like it has to have been way longer than a mere eight weeks. but whether i’m in a moment where it feels fresh or forever doesn’t matter, it all still feels the same underneath...sucky.

all the content of my old office is still sitting in two shopping bags on my bedroom floor - which is so completely unlike me to have not wanted to put the stuff away yet, so i imagine it’s a psychological thing that i don’t care to unpack and organize the bags even though i’ll clean around them and under them – and it’s funny that i now sit here and look at them and wonder what the hell to do with all this crap anyway.

and for the past six years i never thought of the items in that manner – why, almost everything in those bags came with me from my first job to my last job because they were just that important – but now that i’ve become my own office (literally, as i caved and upgraded my phone to one with internet and email capabilities, and so as i continue on my somewhat nomadic not-tethered-to-a-desk-all-day existence i am able to conduct any and all business i may need to from a street corner), i really don’t know why i needed all that junk in the first place. the inspirational magnets? the plastic hippos? the stuffed cows? the mug from an ex that held pens that barely even work anymore? the ceramic dish of scented rocks?

what waste. i imagine i’ll be taking a minimalist approach to my future desk.