A room full of memories
Have you ever had one of those days when you feel like there just aren't enough hours to get everything done? It's strange, isn't it? Some days everything drags by and you're staring at the wall trying to find something to make life interesting. Others everything rushes by and before you know it, you haven't got half as much done as you wanted to.
That's been me for the last few days - distracted. And of course it always happens at the worst possible time. For me that's just as I'm getting back into my writing, and just as I had some interesting topics to blog about as well. Plus now I've got to catch up with all my favourite blogs again.
The weird thing is, I haven't been particularly busy. It's just that my mother decided it was time to get her first computer recently, so after helping her choose and set it up, I started moving all of the old photos I'd kept on my computer over to hers. And I couldn't believe just how many I'd forgotten.
It's funny the things we remember. I know all the words to "Henry Lee", but do I remember my first day of school? Or the face of the first girl I had a crush on? As I've grown older, the things I remember aren't what I thought they'd be. Some of the photos bring it back but on the whole I can't help but feel like I've neglected a large part of what should have been important to me. I suppose we all do that, though. We remember what was important to us at the time, but when we look back we realise it wasn't that important and what really mattered is foggy and unclear.
It was a strange feeling, sitting at my computer and then opening up a few photo albums, seeing these images I barely remembered... it was like a room full of memories that belonged to someone else. It was nice to take that time, to remember and look at those photos, but it still felt distant. Makes me wonder what I'll remember in another twenty years. To be fair, though, it does work the other way as well; a photo captures a moment, but it doesn't always capture a memory. There was one photo in particular I kept looking at. It was taken the morning of my last day in Year 2. I was smiling and it captured that moment, but that's not the memory that comes from it. Instead it's that a few hours later I was pushed into a concrete pillar and spent four hours with a concussion in the school sickroom. That I remember; sometimes a photo doesn't tell the whole story.
I guess this is important to me because memories are important to me; I value them as part of what makes me who I am, both the good and the bad ones. Photos are great for reliving a moment but I don't trust them. They often give you a false memory; you see a photo, ask someone what was happening when it was taken, and from then on you remember it from their perspective, not yours. That's the same reason I cringe when I see people photoshopping photos. There's nothing wrong with touching up an image but when you start taking away too many of the flaws, or put a person into it who wasn't there, you're trying to improve the memory, not the photo, and it's not real. Once again nothing is so beautiful that we can't improve it by tweaking it just a little...
Anyway, that's why I haven't updated the blog for a couple of days; I've been busy in the past. I'm refocused now, though, and to my blog friends, I promise I'll be popping across to catch up later. And maybe you can tell me if you're as forgetful as I am. ;)