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.