Someday When I Go Home

My creativity has been a bit clogged up lately--keeping good company with the dishwasher, washing machine and toilet I guess.  Must be the cold.  I thought I might blog about the difference digital photography has made for me.  I got my digital camera 7 years ago (Feb 2007).  At the time, I was not convinced that I would or could permanently leave film behind, but I was wrong.  My loyalty flew out the window almost as fast as the wind chill dropped this week. 

I was able to use digital photography to record most of Ryan's high school years, and none of Amy's.  Big difference.  As time has gone by, I've been pretty good about getting prints made of the digital pictures I like.  Despite that, I have found it much more difficult to organize my digital pictures than album photos.  The picture library builds and builds as time goes by and I don't have a really good plan in place to organize them and back them up for the future disaster that is certain to occur.

I back up my files to the cloud and further back up my picture files to an external hard drive so they will be available to anyone who might be looking for them Someday.  This leads me to my concern about what will happen to all the family history work I've done over the years.  I use software to record the details (which is backed up regularly) but lots of paper, notes and old pictures are still filed away in their original format.  What's going to happen to this stuff when I'm gone????  It's years and years of work that one of the future descendants will find critical Someday.  I worry about what will happen with this stuff.  Amy and Ryan will be forced to promise to never use it to make a bonfire, but you all need to make a collective promise to keep it safe so that when that future lost cousin comes knocking, it can be handed over in good conscience. 

More on the "Someday" theme, here's another page from Amy's 1997 Someday book that I find especially interesting given her current household residents:

We met Amy in Olean on Sunday so I could finally hand over the remaining Christmas gifts.  I had this vision that I would show Amy the places I remember and talk about Mom and Nanny and Weenie.  HA.  Mom used to like to go to the Beef and Barrel but it was closed on Sundays.  The restaurant I picked blindly on the internet was also closed when we got there.  We ended up at a nearby Mexican place which severely lacked in atmosphere.  But, who cared about atmosphere when we had Christmas gifts to hand over? 

We did have a nice visit with Amy but my desire to drive around and reminisce went out the window almost as fast as that previously mentioned love of 35mm film.  I don't think Amy minded very much.  I was glad enough to see her, hug her and feed her. 

Remember to check the new Gathering the Cousins blog!  One of the podcaster I follow recommends blogging as "cousin bait" so perhaps Someday we'll be found by a long lost cousin--I like that idea.  And if the blog gets visited frequently, it will rise higher in search results when someone looks for us Someday.