Friday the 13th Memories

[Note: I'm transcribing the videos I posted on my YouTube Channel and back dating them to when I posted the videos for people who prefer reading. If you prefer watching the video, visit my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell]

Today is Friday the 13th, and although I'm not superstitious about Friday the 13th anymore, there was a time when I was a little bit superstitious. I was reminded of that this morning when December 13th many years ago fell on a Friday and I was expecting my first child. Depending on which method you believe, my due date was either December 9th or December 12th. Although 12/12 would have been a date that I would have loved as a birthday for my son, it came and it went. I really did not want to give birth on Friday the 13th. Today that would have been pretty cool with Taylor Swift, Dick Van Dyke and one of my great friends celebrating their birthdays on December 13th. I found out about Dick Van Dyke's birthday when Coldplay released a new video on his 99th birthday filmed with him at his home.

That Friday the 13th, perhaps imagining that we may not have that many date nights left in the near future, my husband and I went to see The English Patient in the theater. We sat in the back row in case we had to make a hasty exit, but luckily I got to see the end of the movie and enjoy our last weekend before kids.

Another little connection which is kind of funny is that last night, I was telling my husband about the video I posted yesterday about 12/12/24 where I was talking about my mastermind group and how my takeaway this past year was to better accept periods of contraction along with periods of expansion or flow. He asked me if I think of going into labour when we talk about periods of contraction. It had never occurred to me so now I can't get that out of my head.

So now, it's kind of funny that today's date is reminding me of going into labour many years ago so that was a funny coincidence or a nudge of a few different things to inspired me to record the video and write this blog.

I think of that with reviving our memories when we are reminded of something or we get a nudge, to tell the story or revive buried memories. I had a nudge like that last week when I saw my son's birthday coming up in the calendar. I recorded another video I haven't posted yet about using the birthday nudge to work on his childhood album that I hadn't completed yet. In the video, that I'll complete and post now, I talked about how to plan an album like that because it's really difficult in the moment to decide what to include because in the moment, everything seems important. In a way, procrastinating on making this type of album is helpful, because in hindsight we get better perspective and it becomes easier to choose what is most meaningful.

I like to use these nudges to spend time with my memories and to revive things that matter. It's not necessarily about having a project or making photo albums. It can also be about telling the stories, looking at other memories like a pregnancy journal or time capsule to be reminded of other moments. Spending time with our memories when we're given reminders helps us to remember them better.

12-12-2024: I Love Numbers

[Note: I'm transcribing the videos I posted on my YouTube Channel and back dating them to when I posted the videos for people who prefer reading. If you prefer watching the video, visit my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell]

When I wrote the date at the start of a call on December 12th, I realized it was 12-12-24. When I notice numbers or patterns; whether it's my favourite number, 20, or times on the clock like 11:11, 2:22 or 4:44; it makes me notice and gives me hope that whatever I'm working on, I'm going in the right direction. This reminds me that I noticed 10:10 this morning and 11:11 so I thought I'd record a video (and write a blog post) to remind me that I noticed 12-12-24 at the start of our last Mastermind session. I also woke up at 5:55 and took a screenshot when I noticed the time.

I've been a part of a mastermind for three years with yearly programs. Today was our last session for this year's Mastermind group so I'm kind of sad that it's over but grateful that it happened if we think of that famous quote: 

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened"

Dr. Seuss

Part of our meeting today was looking back at our takeaways from the year and for me, what I shared about one of my takeaways was about accepting that along with periods of expansion, there are periods of contraction. I have these amazing moments or ideas and then it seems like there's a period where nothing seems to be flowing. I saw this with relation to memories as well, that we have extraordinary days or moments and they're special because they don't happen all the time. If every day was extraordinary, they would become ordinary.

I've taken a lot of notes over the years of what I've been working on and I notice that there's some periods where it's like an idea flows into another flows into another. I had some blog posts where they just flow into another, then there ccan be months where nothing new is coming up.

I still get discouraged sometimes but I think that's what I've been working on to continue to try to accept that I can't be creative every day or coming up with an idea, composing a melody, writing a blog post or recording a vlog. But when I'm inspired, I want to act. 

Today's date reminds me of February 22, 2022 (22-2-22) when I composed a melody that was in a beat of two. Noticing that number gave me a nudge or an idea to create something fun and it added a little whimsy in my day. 

So today, I just wanted to capture that moment, create a video and share.

As I was editing the video, I wanted to find a world clock with the date and noticed it was 4:44pm. Love it.

Protect Your Memories from Technology Failure

[Note: I'm transcribing the videos I posted on my YouTube Channel and back dating them to when I posted the videos for people who prefer reading. If you prefer watching the video, visit my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell]

Why am I so passionate about memories? I want to be in control of my memories and not lose them as technology changes, as devices break or get lost or even natural disasters. I want to help people ensure their memories are protected.

The first thing we need to do to preserve our memories is to understand the technology and where our photos are. We need to ensure that our phones, our computers and SD cards are backed up and how that works. I will cover this in more detail in a later post.

My husband and I have had multiple drives fail and it's scary. The first time, our MacBook was getting the blue screen of death. It would work for 10-15 minutes at a time but then would shut down. During the times when it worked, I was frantically copying files and photos to an external hard drive in order to preserve them. I managed to save most of the files that were meaningful, but lost a few. It hurts and is frustrating to lose files.

We then started to do time machine backups on our computers. When our iMac drive failed, we managed to preserve almost everything by recovering files from the Time Machine backup. A computer failing is like a fire destroying photo albums. I wrote in my last post that since I was a child, I knew that if I had time, in case of fire, I would grab the photo albums. It was a fear I often thought about.

It's been a learning process over the years, as one machine breaks, of learning how it worked and staying up to date with technology. A lot of times I didn't understand and when it failed, that's when I learned what I didn't understand.

Last year, I was preparing a presentation for a moms group about preserving memories and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to talk about technology. Everyone doesn't have the same technology and I'm not a technology expert. I have lost memories when technology failed me and I didn't fully understand how it worked. That's how I learned, but I didn't want to learn everyone's technology so I didn't want to bring it up. 

But as I was writing my presentation on my MacBook where all my photos were stored, my MacBook broke, two weeks before my presentation. So I thought, the universe wants me to talk about technology. I can't resist bringing it up. I asked the moms, if your computer failed or you lost your phone, would you be okay? Would your memories be preserved? Many moms' eyes opened wide with fear. I may not be able to teach someone how to preserve or recover their memories, but I hope to inspire them to learn or hire someone to help them.

When it happened to me that time, I was bummed to spend a lot of money on a new computer and because I was in a rush for the replacement, I didn't get the ideal computer for me, I bought something in stock. It was a calm process because this time, I also had a cloud backup. I recently realized that perhaps I didn't save everything once again, because again, I didn't fully understand how icloud worked. But that's a conversation for another day.

The first thing is understanding the technology we're using with our computers, phones and cameras and that is also for our old video cameras and cassettes we used to use and quality settings when we're digitizing. I'll be covering more of these topics in future posts.  The first step is understanding where our memories are so we can preserve our collection as a whole.

Preserving Memories in a Digital World

[Note: I'm transcribing the videos from my YouTube Channel and back dating them to when I posted the videos for those who prefer reading. If you prefer watching, visit my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell]

I launched my YouTube channel in order to inspire people to preserve their memories and revive their most meaningful ones. The reason I want to do that is because I want to preserve my memories and revive the most meaningful ones myself. By inspiring others, by sharing ideas, I can also be preserving my memories and reviving what matters the most to me.

This has been something that has been close to my heart my whole life. Since I can remember, I have always known that if there was a fire in our house and everyone was safe, I knew where the photo albums were and I would try to grab them if there was time.

I'm not sure where this started. I don't know if there was a firefighter that came to our school and asked what we would grab in a fire, but it's something I always knew. No matter where I lived even after I moved away from home, I would know where my albums were so I could grab them in case of fire, or in case of evacuation. That was really important to me.

When we started a family, I started scrapbooking and my album collection really started to grow. I ended up with dozens of photo albums, especially after I was also teaching classes and hosting workshops where we would work on our albums together. As my collection grew, I realized that my escape plan didn't really work anymore. I couldn't grab all those albums in case of a fire. If I was given 24 hours to evacuate, perhaps, but in a spur of a moment, those albums would not be saved.

As a backup I used to keep negatives somewhere else, so if something happened to the albums, at least we had negatives to reprint the photos. This all changed when digital photography emerged.

I stopped scrapbooking around 2008 because I became overhwlemed. We had a digital camera for 3 years and as time passed, I felt even more overwhelmed and kept procrastinating. It got worse when we got cellular phones carrying a camera with us all the time. The number of photos we take now in one year is approximately what we used to take in 10 years. Globally we take 1.4 trillion photos every year. This is equivalent to100-200 photos a year on average per person in 2000; and 1200-1500 per year per person in 2020. (My average is much higher, how about you?)

What do we do with them all? Ten years after I stopped scrapbooking, I really felt the weight of the clutter on my shoulders, especially because it was so meaningful to me to keep my memories alive. In 2019, I started a big catch-up project called Revive55 Project, spending 55 weeks, ending on my birthday to get all my memories back in order. I wanted to stop feeling overwhelmed and scared that I would lose my memories. Of course, I had the memories in my head, but photos and memorabilia help us to remember. When we see a photo, we often say "oh right, I remember that". You may have felt that when you saw a Facebook memory pop up on your feed that you had forgotten about.

So much was happening with our kids in their teen years, and without scrapbooking, I felt like I would forget all the moments. Scrapbooking helps us to remember because we are going through and reliving those moments as we scrapbook. 

Some of the things I worked on that year, I realized weren't really time well spent; and other times, I wondered how we could do it more efficiently, and revive our memories in a way that it doesn't take so long. Because really, we don't want to be stuck in the past reliving our old memories. We want to relive them but not all the time. We want to also chase dreams, look to the future as we are living in the moment. We want to capture new memories, not just preserve our old ones. That's where Present Harmony comes in that we look back with gratitude of our memories we loved and we look forward with hope of capturing new memories and all of that happens in the present.

In the present, we're looking back. In the present, we're looking forward. Our future will become our present. That's why I wanted to find a better and more efficient way of preserving our memories so it's not as overwhelming a process as it could be if we tried to continue to preserve our memories in the digital world like we did in the film world. That old way didn't work for me anymore, so I wanted to explore new ways of preserving our memories.

Introducing my new YouTube Channel

[Note: I'm transcribing the videos from my YouTube Channel and back dating them to when I posted the videos for those who prefer reading. If you prefer watching, visit my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell]

After writing my book Present Harmony: Connecting Past Memories and Future Dreams, I wanted to share ideas with videos. I didn't want to clutter my original YouTube channel with my Present Harmony posts so I chose to begin a new channel that you can find at www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell. It's ismportant to put the @ before my name in the url. It's YouTube's new(ish) way of having an easy url to remember.

Along with inspiration and instruction on living in present harmony, I will be hosting Revive Hour sessions where I encourage viewers to spend time with their memories and their dreams. We remember our memories better by reliving them and we take action towards our dreams by visualizing them.

To me, Present Harmony means having our memories connected to our dreams. Memories that make us happy; moments of awe; moments that are connected with people we love; and with things we love. We connect our best memories with our dreams, because we still want to chase dreams and improve our lives. In order for us to chase meaningful dreams, we need to know what we really love. By looking back at our past experiences we can see what we really want to embrace in the future and what we want to let go of. 

We look back with gratitude and even if they're memories that we don't love, we can be grateful for the lessons we learned. We can then let go of the unhappy memories and embrace the learning. 

Present harmony occurs when in the present we are grateful for our past memories; and in the present we are hopeful for our future dreams. The present is really where it all matters. We don't want to be stuck in the past or the future. We dream and take action today to make our dreams come true.

In the end, when our dreams come true, it will happen in the present. Our future will become our present. It's why I called my book Present Harmony - we look back and look forward while being present.

Introducing: Present Harmony

When I started my 60T🖤60 Project, I gave myself the goal to hold the book I was writing in my hands on my 60th birthday. My daughter then encouraged me to release some of the pressure by commiting to holding my first draft in my hands rather than what I felt was the perfectly finished book.

In 2019 when I started my Revive55 Project, I thought I might write a book about preserving memories, but what I realized was that I was as passionate about chasing dreams as about memories. I wondered whether to have two separate books. My tagline on my website and my newsletters was "chasing dreams...capturing memories". 

What I found was that in the present, we travel back in time to remember happy moments from the past and travel forward in time to plan future memories we’ll want to capture. Although the moments were in the past, the act of remembering happens in the present. Although we dream of the future, the act of dreaming happens now. The present is when and where the magic happens. When our future dreams become reality, they will happen in the present. Our future will become our present.

Present was my word of the year in 2022 and Harmony was my word of the year for 2023 and 2024. I loved putting them together for my book title. We find harmony in the present moment by looking back at our best moments in the past and dreaming of ideal moments in the future. This balancing of looking back and looking forward brings peace and harmony as we live our lives in a way that values our most meaningful dreams and memories. 

The chapters cover the following topics:

1. Knowing ourselves. Who we were; who we are and who we intend to be.
2. Understanding what and why we remember certain things and not others.
3. Envisioning our dreams and how to make them happen.
4. The power of serendipity, synchronicity, the law of attraction and manifestation.
5. The highlights and what I learned about memories during my Revive55 Project.
6. The importance of creating space and the struggle with letting go.
7. Reviving our most meaningful and treasured memories.
8. Connecting moments that weave together to become more meaningful.
9. Embracing technology as a mindset for memory keeping.
10. The importance of focusing on the present.
11. My focus during my 60T🖤60 Project.

I share my journey and what I have learned over the years of researching, teaching and writing about memories, chasing dreams and the importance of the present moment. My hope is that something will resonate with those who read it; and it will inspire them to balance past memories and future dreams to achieve present harmony.

Total Solar Eclipse

It's two weeks until the total solar eclipse on Monday April 8th. Have you made plans yet? 

It will be the last total solar eclipse that I will see in my lifetime (unless I travel).

Alberta will have one in 2044. 

USA (California to Florida to Caribbean) in 2045. 

Mexico to North Florida in 2052. 

Maritimes in 2079.

There will be others in other parts of the world, but these are the only ones in North America until 2079.

There will be partial solar eclipses (when you see a crescent sun) and annular solar eclipses (the moon is smaller than the sun) and lunar eclipses, but this is the only time in Ontario that we can see the moon fully cover the sun. It will go dark in the middle of the day.

This will not happen in Toronto where it will be a 99.6% eclipse. Click here to check the timing and details of your town or city. All of Canada, Mexico and the US (except Alaska) will at least experience a partial eclipse. 

Although partial eclipses are exciting, they say that witnessing a total eclipse is unforgettable. 

You don't just see a total eclipse, you experience it!

Daylight turns into dusk then night when the sun becomes a black circle surrounded by a halo. Some planets and stars can become visible. The temperature drops by ten degrees or more. 

The colours of sunset will be visible all around you. I can't imagine a 360 degree sunset!!

The total eclipse will end with a sunburst along one edge which is called the "diamond ring effect" because it looks like an engagement ring. This is what the 99% eclipse will look like in Toronto.

Eclipse Glasses

I bought eclipse glasses from Telescopes Canada. I preferred to order from a reputable source even if they charged shipping.  If you live near me, I bought extra ones to save friends from ordering unsafe ones or paying more on shipping than on the glasses themselves. Contact me if you're interested.

If you're purchasing your own, you want to ensure they are from a reputable source and that they meet the international ISO 12312-2 standard. You should not be able to see anything when you look through them. Ensure they cover your whole eyes, that they don't have scratches or holes and that you put them on before looking up at the sun (and to look down before taking them off). If you can see a lamp or light, they are possibly counterfeit. The Toronto Star reported that there were unsafe and counterfeit glasses sold on Amazon in 2017. Click here for a list of suppliers of safe glasses and click here for an article about warnings and reassurances about glasses by the American Astronomical Society.

I also ordered a camera filter that will hopefully give us better photography and protection than it did for the partial eclipse in 2017. We were lucky that we didn't damage the camera. I have since learned that cameras and phone cameras can get damaged if exposed to the sun's rays during an eclipse without eclipse glasses or filters protecting them (sunglasses are not enough). 

It would still be cool to see the partial eclipse if I stayed home, but I'll get other chances for that in the future. I plan on driving to experience the total eclipse.

Here's the map of the general path (not completely accurate as this seems to show Toronto in the path):

Golden Horseshoe and Northern New York State:

The closer we are to the blue line, the longer the moon will cover the sun. In Buffalo, it will be for 3 minutes 45 seconds. In Brantford it will be one minute 15 seconds.

Other times of darkness to give perspective:

Burlington: 44 seconds

Hamilton: 1min 47sec

Beamsville: 2m59s

Smithville: 3m6s

Cayuga: 3m10

Niagara Falls: 3m32s

Welland: 3m34s

Fort Erie: 3m43s

In the Golden Horseshoe, the partial eclipse will start at around 2:05pm. The total eclipse will be at around 3:18pm and the partial will end at 4:30pm.

In 2017, traffic congestion in the path of the total eclipse in the U.S. lasted for 13 hours after the eclipse. Hopefully our road systems will better handle the traffic here.

I may try to avoid the QEW from Hamilton to Niagara. 

Seeing all the open space on the map below, I may go as far as possible on the QEW and then exit and drive into open space to find a spot.

In 2017, Toronto experienced a 70% partial eclipse. I was super excited and remember the craziness of the crowds at the Science Centre when I went to get eclipse glasses that morning. Thousands of people lined up in organized chaos to get a pair of eclipse glasses before they ran out.

We went to our local park to view the partial eclipse. We had a camera set up on a tripod, but we didn't get a good photo of the eclipse. At least we could see it with our eyes while wearing the protective glasses.

We also prepared a simple viewer with two pieces of white cardboard. We punched a pinhole in one piece of cardboard and let the sunlight fall through that hole onto the second piece of cardboard held below it to see an inverted image of the sun. You can use a colander for a similar experiment. 

I was luckier last fall for the annular eclipse and got a photo of the 39% partial eclipse when I put my purple tinged sunglasses in front of the lens. I didn't look at it with my eyes this time because I didn't have eclipse glasses.

It surprised me how happy I was to have captured this one and how close I got to say: "maybe next time". It was a last second decision for me to go outside to "see" it. It's so easy to make excuses to not do things. I try to remind myself that it's normally worth the effort. I wrote a blog post last fall with more detail about these past events and synchronicities that occurred (including a Coldplay concert). Click here to read it.

I hope you enjoy this rare event. I'd love to hear about your experience.