Revive From Archive: Concert Videos

I went to see Bono (of U2) at his book launch tour: Stories of Surrender. 

I'm happy I didn't read reviews or watch interviews. I loved hearing his stories for the first time. I knew of the band's history, but he added details that were insightful and humorous.

The show moved seemlessly from story to song. There were small settings on the stage he would move to in order to set the scene whether it was at the pub with his father or on an operating table. From the moment he came on stage (that brought happy tears to my eyes) to the moment he left, I was glued and immersed in Bono's life. What a great way for him to share the stories of his life.

This blog post isn't meant to review the show. There are more qualified music and show writers who would do it more eloquently.

The show left me once again pondering something I have often thought of and talked about. 

Do we remember moments at concerts better when we have photos and videos to remind us or do we lose the magic of being in the moment by using our camera?

At the Bono show, it was a camera-free show. Our phones were locked in pouches when we entered the venue and not unlocked until we left. 

It felt a bit like a flashback to earlier days when we needed to plan on where to meet up after we separated rather than texting each other and also to trusting our brain to remember moments from the show ... or moments being forgotten.

In a way, it was a relief to just enjoy the show and not worry about when to take a photo or video. I have learned over the years what type of lighting and sound are best for photos and videos, so sometimes part of my mind is on the lookout for these moments.

In 2013, I wrote a blog post "To video or not at concerts". I offered my tips for capturing some memories while still staying in that moment. Since then, I have used the term "memories bliss point" to describe the balance of enough memory capturing to optimally enjoy and not too much that they end up lost in photo/video collection clutter.

I personally love some reminders of concerts but last night's show was a perfect one to not be distracted. There were new stories and new songs that were part of the overall story. Focusing on each word was important in this context. Without photos and videos, we at least have Bono's book to remind us of the show.

In contrast to Bono's show, I feel I don't have to be "in the moment" the whole time at a concert where I know every song very well. I love to capture parts of my favourite songs and even sometimes "magic moments" like I did with Amazing Day at the Coldplay concert in 2017. I still get goosebumps and tears in my eyes when I hear myself tell my son "It's Amazing Day" when I realized they added one of my favourite song to the setlist. The excitement in my voice takes me back to that moment. You can read a blog post about that here. I also love capturing special moments when the artists stray from the regular lyrics or have an interesting introduction to a song.

So how do we enjoy our concert videos? Some of my favourite concert moments are uploaded on my YouTube channel, but I still have others that are buried in my photo/video collection. I also know that someday YouTube may no longer exist. I uploaded many (all?) of my videos at lower quality, so that's not a preservation strategy, but it's a temporary way for me to enjoy some of my videos.

In 2009, while performing at Sound Academy in Toronto, Travis encouraged their audience to video their last song (Flowers in the Window) and upload it to YouTube. That song was the first video I uploaded to YouTube. I had already taken a few years worth of videos at that point, but hadn't done anything with them so I uploaded some of my previous favourites. I have since uploaded almost one hundred more concert videos. From 2009 until 2016, I uploaded individual songs whether in their entirety or clips of them. 

It wasn't until 2017 that I created highlight videos. I combined a bunch of clips into one video using Final Cut Pro (or iMovie). I wanted to share the clips with my friend who invited me to see P!nk in concert. She wasn't one of my favourite artists - although I was blown away by her performance. I didn't want to upload a bunch of her songs on my YouTube channel but choosing one song wouldn't do the concert justice - so I thought a highlight video was the way to go. You can see the video by clicking here.

The following year when I went to England to see my favourite band, Keane, I created another highlights video. I had already seen them eight times so I wanted to enjoy the concert more than take videos. I recorded a few clips of my favourite songs and the one song I hadn't yet heard them perform live. I love the idea of these highlight videos..to just capture little clips from various songs.

When I saw Jason Mraz this summer, I collected my song clips together and started editing them down for a highlights video. This was the process I put in place to choose the clips right away when the performances are fresh in my mind. It's faster that way to easily skip through to memorable moments. I edited them down to fifteen minutes but wanted to reduce it even more. This blog post is reminding me that I didn't finish or post it so I continued to edit it down and am reminded of moments I loved that I had already forgotten about. This is confirming that I love having videos to remind me.

It's also encouraging me to go back to my older concert videos and continue to make highlight videos. Going to concerts was a major part of my life for fifteen years. I want to preserve my favourite concert memories. YouTube is not a preservation strategy that I recommend so organizing them on my computer or external drive is a priority.

Revive From Archive: Meaningful Moments

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away yesterday. When moments occur that mean something to me, I love to revive memories relating to these events.

Her passing reminded me of the last time Queen Elizabeth visited Toronto in 2010. This was a time in my life when I didn't say...maybe I'll go next time. I had been to the Vancouver Olympics a few months before and wanted to continue to pursue my passions (and interests). 

When I learned that The Queen would be in Toronto, I decided to go with my SLR camera in hand. I am grateful that I did since she never came back and I love the photos I captured.

 

I'm thankful that I wrote a blog post about my day because it is reminding me of details that I had forgotten. You can read it and see more photos here. There was a lot of luck (or synchronicity) and resourcefulness involved in capturing the photos. Looking through the photos on my current computer, there is one that I included on my blog that I don't have. This reminds me that I still have photos from that day on an old computer that I want to revive.

The other thing I want to do is to connect moments with this story. I haven't figured out how I want to capture these connected stories yet. Do I want to put everything together in a video format? A photo album? Memory box? In an app/website? For now, I am just making a list of the moments I want to connect like:

• Seeing Prince Charles (now King Charles III) and meeting Camilla (now Queen Consort) at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in 2009 (click here for my blog post)
• My first time seeing Buckingham Palace in 1992
• Tower of London visit including view of Crown Jewels in 1992 with the guard saying "Move along; they're just diamonds" that made us laugh.
• Diana death (where and when I heard the news); Diana memorial fountain in London; exhibit in Toronto (where I bought an English Rose tea cup and maybe a program? - I want to revive that memory of the exhibit)
• Seeing Buckingham Palace July 7 2005 (the day of the London bombings)
• Royal York Hotel - my visit for a meeting
• Buckingham Palace tour in 2018
• Growing up in a town she visited as a Princess (in lieu of her ill father King George VI)
• Queen anniversary cards to my parents and parents-in-law
• Queen Jubilee Morning Melody I composed 
• Queen Elizabeth II death (where and when I heard the news); interviewed by CTV News

As I remember other moments that fit in this category or experience more, I can include them to add even more connections. I love the idea of putting all these stories together somehow. It adds more meaning when they are all together.

Revive From Archive: Physical Prints

A few weeks ago it was World Photography Day. I found out a little late in the day, so rather than taking a new photo that wasn't that meaningful, I thought it was a perfect time to revive one of my photos that had been a little lost in the archive.

On that day, it was also opening day at the CNE and it reminded me of a photo that has been described by my hobby photographer husband as one of the best photos I have ever taken. It was taken in 2004 after a mother and daughter day at the CNE where we went to see the Canadian Idol top 5 perform. While leaving, my daughter paused at the fountain. I had a zoom lens on my camera for the concert so had to step back quite a way, but with a quality camera (Nikon SLR) I captured a beautiful photo of my daughter. The lighting and the colours were perfect. In my photo album, I framed it with blue and pink paper to match my daughter's outfit.

We got an 8x10 print and enjoyed seeing it on the plate rail of our dining room for years (top left below). 

When I purchased very long Monet prints at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris a few years ago, I replaced the framed photos with it. Sometimes when we keep the same photos on display, they become part of the background that we don't appreciate them anymore. I thought that putting the photo away for a while would make it more special when I revived it.

I took it out of my photo album to scan it, so now I have a digital copy. I changed the date of the photo in my photos app so that I can find it by going back to 2004 (years from now, it will be easier to remember approximately the date of the photo than the date I scanned it). If I had my photos in folders on my computer, I would have added it to a 2004 folder to find it again more easily.

When I was trying to find the photo in my photo collection before realizing that it was pre-digital camera, I found another photo from 5 years later when we tried to recreate the moment.

I love connecting these two separate days together to notice how much taller my daughter got and that her love for blue hasn't wavered, even to this day. Unfortunately we didn't recreate it this year, but this is a reminder if we're ever by that fountain, to replicate it to add more meaning to this location and these moments. I love "then & now" moments.

It can feel overwhelming to think of reviving every meaningful moment. I find that I'm more excited about reviving moments when there is added meaning in the present. Reviving moments one at a time makes it a more manageable process.

AGO Exhibition: I Am Here

It’s a song

Nothing’s wrong

Everything is clear

I am here.

(I Am Here by David Wall)*

I'm happy I learned that the exhibition I Am Here: Home Movies and Everyday Masterpieces was at the AGO, less than a week before it was leaving. I missed the original (and subsequent) announcements.

This exhibition speaks so much to my love of memories and documenting our lives. This is how the AGO presented the exhibition:

The exhibition was divided by theme. I took a photo of each title sign and put them in this collage.
The themes included Our House, We Are Family, Food Glorious Food, Fight The Power, Dance To The Music, My Favourite Things, On The Street Where You Live, Life Is A Highway, Everyday People, and Panorama.

In the middle of the Home and Family areas, was a collection of lost albums that really had me thinking about how photo albums have changed over the years. For almost a century, people have told their life stories with photo albums. How will the next generation tell their life stories?

The exhibition included many home movies including "baby's breakfast" which may be the first home movie ever recorded by Louis Lumière in 1895. This reminded me of seeing another Louis Lumière film of workers leaving a factory at a previous exhibition. 

I Am Here also showed how home movies have changed since its inception with a special focus on protests captured on our smart phones in the past decade. This part of the exhibition was very insightful and thought-provoking.

I was inspired by the "Mixtape Diaries" by Glynnis Grant-Henderson. I create yearly playlists of the songs I love each year. I have often blogged about them, but I loved the journals that Glynnis created. My husband has made over 200 mixtapes (back in the cassette days). It would be amazing to have some thoughts to transport us back to what he was thinking when he made them.

Another exhibit that had me thinking was one of Andy Warhol's 600 memory boxes. It contained 595 objects that the gallery described as falling into the category of the everyday like Christmas cards, newspaper clippings, doodles and tax forms. As fascinating as it was to see a glimpse of an art icon; it's a reminder to me that as much as I love memories and memorabilia; less is more meaningful and I prefer curating my memories.

I love connected moments, so I especially appreciated this graphic showing the timeline from cave paintings to Tik Tok.

The exhibition ended with a collection of vignettes representing themes of "home-movieness". The 26 themes were titled alphabetically and included a song, I Am Here by David Wall that really resonated with me. You can see a few examples of the themes and here I Am Here in this video posted by the AGO. You can also read more about the Panorama compilation by clicking here.

I saw this exhibition at the perfect time, as I am focusing on Revive From Archive and organizing memories like art galleries curate exhibitions.

*Lyrics as I hear them. Apologies if there's a mistake

Revive From Archive

If I end up writing a book, I may call it: Revive connected moments From Archive for a meaningful present. (Revive From Archive for short)

The types of memories that I love are those that connect to others and that become more meaningful because of that connection.

Chronological photo albums are a great resource like a library, but we don't necessarily want to read every book. Chronological albums are like our photo library on our computers or on our phones. The meaningful moments can become lost in the clutter or what I like to call: the archive.

The Archive includes:

• photos - digital and printed
• videos - digital, cassettes and reels
• stories - written or remembered
• mementos

Just like a museum or gallery curates a collection for an exhibition; we can enjoy our memories better when we curate our collection or archive. 

Revive From Archive doesn't mean organizing our whole collection. Maybe you think that you have to organize your whole collection, but it's overwhelming so you procrastinate. Maybe you think that once you're retired or kids grow up that you'll get to it, but chances are that if you haven't done it yet, it will never be high enough priority for it to get done.

Let me offer a mindset shift. Rather than organizing all your photos, revive your most meaningful ones. 

I love going to the art gallery when they have exhibitions where they display pieces of art from various places in the world and connect them in a meaningful way. One of my favourite exhibitions was Impressionism in the Age of Industry at the AGO. They showcased all kinds of art dedicated to the theme of industry from the 1850's to early 1900's.

Although there is a timeline on this exhibition, they still focused on certain themes. They even made a connection between the Eiffel Tower and the CN Tower.

A few questions you can ask yourself include:

• Like a gallery or museum - which memories are part of your permanent collection? 
• Which are brought out for special exhibitions?
• What is front and center - first thing you see in your house? 
• What is the first story you tell when you meet someone and you want to tell them about your life?
• Which are private collections just for you? 
• Which are more obscure and kept on a top floor...for your biggest fans?

I hope to inspire you to revive some of your photos and memories and not let them be forgotten in the archive.

Lullabies & Legacies

I received an email in the spring from Massey Hall & Roy Thomson Hall that caught my attention. The subject line was "Help share a lifetime of memories. Donate to the Lullaby Project today".

The word memories always catches my attention. I had missed a few earlier emails that described it: "The Lullaby Project pairs expectant parents with artists to write, record, and perform a personal lullaby – a bond and connection to last a lifetime."

I couldn't resist donating to the campaign since music is a large part of my life and my memories. I loved the idea of composing a lullaby and wish I had when I was expecting. Interestingly, the first songs I composed were 11 months prior to the birth of my fist child, but they weren't melodies that I would sing or hum to my kids. They would have heard me play them on the piano though.

I remember singing Yellow by Coldplay to my daughter. 

🎵Look at the stars; look how they shine for you

And everything you do Yeah, they were all yellow

I came along I wrote a song for you

And all the things you do And it was called Yellow🎵

It's memorable because I had a friend over who liked that I wasn't singing typical "baby" songs but songs I loved. And my daughter liked it so why sing songs I don't like to her?  It's funny looking back that my daughter's favourite colour was yellow for a while and it still is one of her favourites. Coincidence?

I love lyrics and have often used lyrics to introduce my blog posts. Since I donated to the Lullaby Project, I received Supporter Newsletters. A few weeks ago, the newsletter highlighted the Lyrics & Legacies Project. This project pairs songwriters with seniors in a long term care home for them to write their life story in a song. I had goosebumps and happy tears reading about this project and listening to the songs they composed. You can hear them by clicking here. The lullabies can be heard here.

I donated to this project without hesitation. During the summer, I was participating in a Passion & Purpose Summer Series hosted by Brenda Jasmin where we were reading the book Passion To Purpose by Amy McLaren. I donated to Lyrics & Legacies after the 4th week of our 7 week series. The following week on our zoom call with the theme "Make an Impact", I told the group about this project and how it excited me. With two weeks to go before our last zoom call that would have the theme of Legacy & Vision, I decided to write a song to share with the group. 

I will write more about Passion To Purpose in another post but for now, I will just say that finding what moves us makes our lives more meaningful. Happy tears are a sign that I have found something that is meaningful to me. In her book, Amy believes that channeling our gifts and our giving (whether donating time or money) with causes we're passionate about will have a bigger impact.

It has me wondering about how I make donations. I like that I have automatic monthly donations set up so that my giving is more proactive, but I'm not passionate about many of the causes that I donate to. I believe they are important issues but they're not what I'm passionate about.

What if rather than having given my "regular" amount to the Lullabies & Legacies projects, I had given a more meaningful contribution?  Sometimes, we can have a bigger impact and involvement when we give more. Reading Passion To Purpose has me re-evaluating my donations.

Music and memories move me in so many ways and finding projects to support that include both made my heart sing.

World Backup Day (Short version)

I wrote a blog post when I found out it was World Backup Day a couple of days ago. I wrote about the typical things: back up in case of disaster. 

I wrote the stories of when disaster happened in the world (MySpace and Toy Story2) and my world (damaged hard drive and MacBook crash). How having a backup saved us once and how not understanding how the backup worked made me miss an important memory that got lost. If you are interested in that blog post, click here.

If you know how to backup your devices, amazing! This day is a reminder to do so. 

If backing up is an overwhelming task for you, I invite you to think of what you can do. What would have the most impact that you are able to do?

If your computer or phone died right now, what would make you cry that you lost? What is irreplaceable? Protecting those items is what would have the most impact.

This is the question that firefighters ask. If your house was on fire and you had 2 minutes to grab something, what would you grab on your way out?

On World Backup Day, I ask you to take 2 minutes or 2 hours to find those items that are precious to you and preserve them.

Backing up a computer or phone (without help) may be too overwhelming for the general population but finding those precious items and making a copy shouldn't be.

Do you have an external drive or USB key? Copy the best of the best memories on there and ideally make an extra copy to store elsewhere. If something happens to your house, it won't be destroyed with your computer or phone. 

Review this backup at least once a year to add to it and to ensure that your backup drive still works. They don't last forever. It's also amazing to look back at our best memories so there's also an emotional benefit to checking the backup.

You don't want your precious memories to be forgotten digitally like photos could be in a box. The benefit of the box is that paper today will be paper in 50 years. A digital file today may be useless in 50 years. We need to update our backup as technology changes.

World Backup Day (long version)

World Backup Day is held the day before April Fool's Day because people play jokes on unsuspecting people so it's a reminder to be prepared and safe in case of disaster. 

Are your photos and sentimental digital files only on one device? How would you feel if that device failed?

There's a wonderful saying that I love:

"If you don't make time for your wellness, you'll be forced to make time for your illness".

We could say: If you don't make time to backup, you may need to make time to recover your digital life.

If you don't have a backup and your computer hard drive or phone is unrecoverable, it means:

• re-downloading purchases from the App store
• re-downloading from SD cards and drives
• scanning printed photos
• downloading sub-par quality photos from social media sites
• copying photos from family and friends
• re-downloading from iTunes or CDs
• scanning documents
• downloading from financial institutions

I think you get the picture; and depending on how you keep your data, most would be completely lost.

Writing this blog post is also forcing me to review my backup practices. I am over backed up in some areas (which is taking a lot of storage space) and under backed up in others (with a risk of losing items). 

I used to backup with TimeMachine on my iMac, but have to admit that I didn't set up my MacBook to backup since I got it almost two years ago (eek). I also have to admit that when I say "I", I mean my husband setup our iMac with TimeMachine. 

My iPhone and MacBook SYNC to icloud.

It's important to understand the difference between syncing and backing up. Backing up is making a copy at that particular moment in time. If my computer was backed up on March 1st, anything added to my computer since then is not backed up. That's why regular backups are important. If you lose everything from your computer, you can recover what was last backed up. Your computer basically goes back to your last backup date.

Syncing is a live copy. If you delete or add something in one place, it gets deleted or added at the other place.

So at any moment in time, my photo (and video) collection is exactly the same on my phone, the cloud and the Photos app on my two computers. They are synced. If I delete a photo on my phone, it gets deleted from my computers and the cloud...and vice versa. If this was all I had, my photo collection would not be considered to be backed up. If something happened to the photos on my computer and they all got deleted by mistake. They would be deleted from the cloud and the phone. 

This was one reason that I hesitated connecting to the cloud. It's scary to think of losing a collection, but in the end, I wanted it because my photo collection was out of control. I would delete on one device but it would still be on the other. I would add to one but it wouldn't be added on the other. I would edit a photo on one device but it wouldn't be edited on the other. I was duplicating work and photos. Having one collection has simplified things in my photo organization process.

Our original iMac hard drive crashed. We had TimeMachine regularly backing up on the iMac so when we replaced the hard drive, it was easy to get everything back on it. I got a bit of a warning when my MacBook was about to crash, so I copy and pasted my most important files and photos in between blue screens (which is NOT a backup - but it was better than nothing). If I had a Time Machine backup on the MacBook, we didn't load it onto the MacBook when it was fixed. That might have been the mistake we made, but it was almost full so we thought I got what was important in my copy and pasting. 

The reason I said that I was over backed up in some areas is that because I don't have time machine set up yet, I have copy and pasted photos and documents to an external drive. It's better than nothing, but speaking from experience, it can create a big mess. When my iMac became full (before I had iCloud), I copy and pasted photos to an external hard drive and removed them from my iMac. When I was bringing them back in, some of them were duplicated. That issue is for another day.

A year before the release of Toy Story 2, an employee. Luckily they found a copy on a personal computer because a technical director had been working from home. It didn't recover all the files, but at least most of them.

Do you remember MySpace? Musicians used to upload their music to that service to share with fans. During a server migration, MySpace lost all the music its users uploaded between 2003 and 2015. Any artist who uploaded and did not keep their original recording lost their music.

An acquaintance of mine had their Facebook account deleted and he did not have the original photos he had uploaded. He figured they would always be on Facebook and also didn't realize that the quality is compressed so the photo you could get back from Facebook isn't the same quality as the original.

It's so easy to lose that meaningful item via a damaged hard drive, hacked computer, broken phone, or any other glitch that erases irretrievable items. That's why we need a backup!

But, a backup takes space! So even though I am recommending backing up, you need a plan and a device with enough space to handle the data.

That's the purpose of World Backup Day, to remind us to stop thinking that we'll backup some day and create a better technological process to protect what matters most to us. Maybe we can also take the time to learn about how backing up works and how to recover to ensure we can recover our data if it gets lost. It will give us peace of mind to know our documents and memories are protected.

Letting Go of Jewelry

I thought my next post would be about letting go of clothes, but am finding that task more challenging, so I am starting with jewelry.

I'm not a big jewelry lover so I'll admit that I may be starting with a small volume of jewelry compared to you. I wear jewelry when I go out socially; not every day. A couple of years ago, I decluttered my '80's and '90's costume jewelry I had loved but had then stored in a box for years. What was the point of them being in storage? As I mentioned in a previous post, I am trying to let go of my nostalgic self. Keeping a box of unused items is not giving positive energy to my present.

I have accumulated jewelry every year for decades as I would receive gifts or buy myself something that would catch my eye. I don't remember ever decluttering a good piece of jewelry. Jewelry is quite personal, so it wasn't something that ever made it into my decluttering efforts. The other reason is that a piece of jewelry is small. Compared to a household item, decluttering a piece of jewelry won't really be noticed.

That is until, the collection continues to grow. As my collection increased and overflowed, I bought new boxes to store them. This happened a little bit at a time over a long period of time, so it's not noticeable, until the top of my dresser became full of jewelry boxes and containers. What started as one large drawered jewelry box from my younger days (high school? university?) turned into multiple jewelry boxes, which overflowed into heart shaped empty chocolate boxes and pouches.

You could say that my jewelry is disorganized - and it has become that way over time. Lately, I would want to wear a specific necklace and not know where it was. I also forgot about certain items I had. The pandemic didn't help, but I have not been wearing much jewelry in the last few years.

The problem related to many parts of my life is that once I own something, especially if it is a gift given to me, I feel the need to keep it forever. In psychology, they refer to this as the endowment effect which finds that people are more likely to keep something they own than buy that same thing when they don't own it.

I am in the process of changing that mindset. Someone doesn't give me a present expecting me to keep it forever, so why do I feel like that?

I am ready to let go of jewelry even pieces that I like or love. I am letting go of jewelry that have memories attached to them. How and why am I doing that?

When the collection gets too big, we can't truly appreciate the best ones, especially when they are buried by the excess. I could get myself a bigger and better organizer but I don't need to keep jewelry that I only wear a few times a year. I often gravitate to my favourites so why not just keep those? 

The more I have, the more there is to maintain and organize. I love the boxes I have and am not interested in an elaborate or space taking unit. I let go of the box I didn't love and was taking the most space. I am keeping the 3 jewelry boxes I love.

I realized after I took the first photo that the heart shaped chocolate box was a memory box that has a childhood shell necklace I loved, my childhood charm bracelet and shells I loved from a childhood trip. They are some of my favourite childhood mementos not actual jewelry.

I started the letting go process with empty jewelry boxes - laying everything out on the table. Recognizing the containers I want to keep, I started by putting my favourites in that space. I like having the smaller boxes inside to better separate the items. I grouped similar things together. 

I kept going until the space was full and I am donating the rest.

Giving it more thought since taking the second photo, the boxes are still overfilled but I need more time to let go of more. I am accustomed to filling a space, fill the closet, fill the drawer, fill the shelf - but that's not the best organization practice. We should leave space to easily find things. We want to make it easy to return things to their place. So I will move some items to an extra box just as a transitionary box to see if I will miss them. I'll review it in a couple of months.

This is a tactic I have been using to help me to let go. I store things to see if they are really missed. Decluttering is a process so I am giving myself a pat on the back for getting it down to this amount.

I feel like I know where each item goes now so it will be easy to put back. It will also be easier to choose what to wear since I can better see what my options.

When I was choosing the jewelry to let go of, I asked myself if I had another item I loved just as much that I could wear if I didn't have it. I let go of things I loved that I found a little finicky to put on, so I often chose not to wear them. I also let go of some I loved with certain outfits that I no longer have. Although I still loved them, they didn't really go with my current wardrobe.

I am hoping that the items I am donating are finding their way to someone who will better appreciate them.

Letting Go of Books

I started this blog post last October but didn't finish it. As I am decluttering more books this weekend, I thought I'd see if I could finish it and maybe add some insight that I didn't have at that time.

As I go through my bookcases, which were overflowing into boxes, the criteria I'm using is whether I:

Let Go

• a book that is easily accessible in the future - so a classic that won't disappear
• a book I loved but will not want to re-read. Whether it's too sad or an interest that isn't one anymore
• useful info that I keep reading and re-reading about - decluttering, productivity, procrastination...how many of these do I need and will I re-read them? 
• informative books that I made summary notes from
• books I wished I wanted to read
• books I wished my kids wanted to read

Keep

• a book about a passion, like travel - I will continue to want to travel, so I love keeping my travel books; especially if I wrote notes in them
• useful info I will want in the future - like my favourite parenting books I'll want to refer to when I'm a grandmother
• rare books like my hometown books that can't be repurchased
• books that may inspire a new idea some day...

 "A Clearing Realization: 

There were books that I didn’t need few years ago but had an intuition to keep.  

for example today .. I had the urge to take few books from my library, and put them together, magically out of nowhere, they spurred a spark of inspiration for a new project for my next book. Suddenly I realized why I kept them. 

The same goes to some pieces of clothes, that may not fit together with my wardrobe at a previous stage. But now after many clearing processes for my wardrobe, it fit perfectly well. 

Listen to your intuition and inspiration when you are clearing. Feel the spark and the inspiration that few items give you, still don’t have logical reason why. Trust your inspiration."

*******

That's what I wrote in October. The last quote is probably from the book Simple Abundance. It sounds like that author. I'm disappointed that I didn't reference it in my draft. I will add the reference when I find it.

As I continued to declutter my books in the past few days, I find it interesting to not have listened to my previous advice.

For example, I got rid of travel books!!! 😲 

I am wanting to create more and more space in my house and I realized that I don't need to keep so many books. I took a photo of the notes insde my travel books - and luckily I wrote notes at the back of the book and not throughout so the notes are saved and the book can be enjoyed by someone else.

Last fall I kept this book. 

It's not easy to find. It's no longer available at Indigo. The author came to our Moms' group and she signed my copy. I scanned the cover and her signature. I would love for someone else to read this book and enjoy it like I did, rather than it sit on my shelf because I met her and she signed it. The photo will remind me in case I want to re-read it in a decade or two. It is available at the library and maybe will return to the book store.

Another book I was keeping was because it was a gift from my husband. I love the film and loved the book. Why not share the love. Why keep an amazing book on my shelf unread for years (obviously I had read it, but then it was sitting there being unread).

Although I scanned the note, I cut out the page and filed it in my chronological Memories folder. Maybe that's a better place for the note than inside the book.

I had been keeping books for decades having read them. Do we keep them to show how "smart" we are and to show that we read all these books. I have lived in this house for almost 25 years. It's not getting any bigger. I also feel that sharing a book shares the knowledge, passion and love. That has been a big mindshift for me. As the years pass and my love of reading continues, I shouldn't keep all the books I read - even if I love them and even if they have memories. 

The memories are not in the physical books. The memories are in my mind and in my heart.

Best Present Self

Bittersweet memories

That is all I'm taking with me

So goodbye, please don't cry

(I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston)

To try to be my best today, I need to let go of my nostalgic self and my someday self.

I thought I was nostalgic when I started my Revive55 Project. When I researched and learned about nostalgia, it was defined as bittersweet memories and homesickness. It's a yearning to return to a happier time. That doesn't make me feel good and maybe isn't what is best for me. 

I'll make a distinction though between nostalgic (bittersweet) memories and happy past memories. Looking at the photos and mementos that I have kept over the decades, I am trying to reflect on what type of memory it is. Does it make me happy in the present? Is it meaningful? Or does it remind me of a happier time that I can't return to? Or worse does it remind me of a time that wasn't happy?

Although I haven't been able to travel the past couple of years, my travel memories still bring up happy feelings when I look at them. Perhaps that is because I know that I still have more travel memories to make. My travel days are not over, they're just on pause.

When I look at my old concert t-shirts, I could say the same thing. I still have concert memories to come, so my past concerts are mostly good memories but perhaps the small fitted t-shirts are not making me feel good because I may never be able to wear them again. (well, I can WEAR them, but I may not want to be SEEN in them...lol) 

I love the design for some of them, like this Coldplay one, so I will keep those and let go of the other ones. I am thinking of framing the ones I love. That feeling of hoping to go back to my smaller self is nostalgic for me. It's a feeling that I want to let go of. I want to feel happy with where I am today. (It's easier said than done, but it's what I am striving for).

I wrote previously about my sports and music trophies. I had two boxes of them in storage. I donated most and kept what I thought at the time were my special ones. Two years later, I can see that some of them are nostalgic. I am ready to let go of more.

When I say I want to let go of my nostalgic self, I am referring to activities, hobbies and experiences. I am not referring to losing someone I love. I fortunately and thankfully can't imagine what it feels like to lose a spouse, a child or a parent. I can't speak for how to deal with immense losses and how to move forward while keeping someone's memory in our hearts.

I am talking about letting go of my own memories that don't add value or happiness to the present.

Letting go of my someday self is about collecting things and ideas about things I keep putting off or keep thinking that I will do some day. For example, I had a sewing machine and basket that I kept for decades barely using them. In high school, I sewed badminton outfits for myself. I couldn't find what I wanted in the stores so created my own with my Mom's sewing machine (even if I never took a sewing lesson). For some reason, I bought myself a sewing machine thinking that some day I would sew. I sewed a Hallowe'en costume for my son once.

He wanted a golf course costume; not to dress up like a golfer. He designed the course including sand traps and water hazards. I sewed the green felt base together. This was one of the few times I used my machine.

When I needed something mended, I would take it to a seamstress. It was not worth me re-learning how to use the machine to fix something. So I kept a few spools of thread and needles and purged the rest, creating space on my shelves for something that would be useful or loved. I am not someone interested in sewing today, so I let it go.

There's a difference between my someday self and my dreamer self. I love setting goals and chasing dreams. I love making vision boards and having lists of things I want to accomplish or places I want to go. I may not be accomplishing those things today, but I am in the process of making them happen or having them manifested.

It's recognizing the difference between something I really want to do rather than something I think I should do.

For me, I really want to make photo albums and video highlights from our past memories. It's not something I think I should do. However, as a Creative Memories consultant, I collected much more scrapbooking supplies than I want to use. I feel like I should use them because I purchased them (or earned them in bonuses) but I don't really want to spend the time decorating my pages as much as I used to. Looking at my scrapbooking supplies, there is a lot that reflects my someday self. I need to let go of those and focus on the ones that will be used. I need to get rid of the clutter to better focus on the albums I want to make.

I know a lot of people who say that they want to make photo albums some day. Do they really want to or do they feel they should? If you are someone who feel they should, I suggest to let go of that someday project. There are other ways to enjoy your memories without feeling the need to organize your whole photo collection into albums.

Moving forward, I may no longer make chronological albums. I feel like my digital photo collection is a continuous library so I'll be focusing on theme albums. More on that in another post.

By letting go of my nostalgic self and my someday self, I am creating space for my best present self.

Present Memories

When I think about memories making me happy, I am thinking about the present. How am I feeling today? Does that memory add something to the present or is it stuck in the past?

When I was choosing my word for 2022, present memories was one of the reasons why I chose the word present.

Just looking at our photos or remembering moments can bring happiness to today. I love that! Looking back at happy memories makes me happy in the present.

I went a step further when we revisited our old apartment and wedding reception hall on our anniversary a couple of years ago. Upon reflection, I am recognizing that the new memories felt different for our apartment and wedding reception hall.

First, we went inside our old condo building that I absolutely love. It's one of my favourite buildings in Toronto. I love flat iron buildings and having actually lived in one when we first moved to Toronto was amazing. 

When we got engaged, we went up to the roof to take photos so we wanted to recreate that moment on this anniversary. The photo of me has the revolving restaurant at the top of the Westin Harbour Castle in the background - where my husband proposed.

We also wanted to see the changed skyscape with all the new buildings. In 2010, while walking from Lake Ontario to our house in midtown, I stopped and went up to the roof to reminisce and see the view. You can read that blog post here. 

We thought it would be fun to see the views from the 1990's, 2010 and 2019. I LOVE the CN Tower and always marvel when I see it, so seeing it from our old building once again was extra special. The photo below of me is from 2010. The 2019 photo on the right is my husband taking a photo with the new L Tower. 

Next, we walked in to the Novotel next door where we had our wedding reception.  The front desk area had changed, but we remembered the old front desk where we stood for what seemed like an hour while they tried to find our reservation. With an early morning flight for our honeymoon, we had gone home to change into our "going away outfits" and brought our luggage to be sent to our room before we returned to our recption.  Not the happiest moment to be reminded of.

From the lobby we climbed the curved staircase to the reception hall which was locked. We looked out the hallway glass door to see the patio where some people may have gone out to cool down but I don't remember going out there for long. I tried to conjure up warm or happy feelings. Of course, I'm happy that we got married and had a great reception there, but seeing it on this day didn't add any value to those memories.

The reception hall didn't have a great view like the condo rooftop did. It also reminded us of a bad experience. Sometimes, bad experiences happen for a reason and it turns out for the better or becomes a funny story, but this one didn't really have that. I love the memories and photos I have of our wedding dinner and reception, but maybe the location itself isn't that important. 

During my Revive55 Project, I was trying to "revive" memories, but sometimes, some memories are just that. Moments in time to treasure. Keep what you love and let go of what you don't.