I abhor feeling attachment to things.
Years ago I was out in the garage going through some old boxes at the same time I was thinking about some people I knew who seemed very connected to what they had been, and uncertain of how to go about being who they had become. So when I reached into the box and pulled out some old object I thought, “I don’t want this thing anymore,” then I thought “oh, but it’s a reminder of …” and then I thought, “I’m in no danger of forgetting that time.”
Since then, I’ve tried to just … put things aside when it occurs to me.
My collection of digital photographs is not something I feel able to simply set aside. I got a reminder of that this afternoon, when I noticed Arq complaining about a failed Lightroom backup that, on initial investigation, appeared to be a tanked drive. The drive had not tanked, but there was a moment of uncertainty about whether data was lost, and how much that might be, what it would take to recover it, etc.
I’ve got my Lightroom stuff split into two vaults. One runs from ca. 2000 to 2014, and the other covers 2015 to now. The vault with older stuff just sits there. It’s poorly curated, with duplicates and culls all mixed in. I am sure most of what I care about at all is in the equally desultory shoebox that is my iCloud Photos collection. It’s all backed up both to NAS and my B2 account (though, you know, B2 seems less ikely to outlive me than I’d hoped) but it’s not usable to anyone in my family, really. It’s just a mess that happens to be backed up. The newer vault is in a little better shape, but it’s still not great.
Anyhow, the brief not-incident reminded me of the project I’ve meant to for a couple of years:
- Go through year by year and figure out the 50 or 100 images from each year that get five stars. I’ve done that for a few years, but when I went way back it got hard.
- Opportunistically delete the culls and duplicates when I spot them.
- Make an artifact out of the five-star images. Right now I’m thinking photo books.
- Organize those “best of the year” images somewhere they’re easy for family to find. flickr has an actual non-profit foundation now, and it’s not expensive to maintain a Pro account.
- Establish 3-2-1 backups terminating in Glacier, and quit thinking about it all as a potential thing. Rather, realize the potential as best I can imagine living with, and then set it aside.
There are a few other moving parts I identified as I was outlining how to set the project up and actually do it, but it’s definitely time.