photo albums

My Best Life Now

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

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There is a country song that talks about living like you are dying. Often, I think that only people with terminal illnesses fully appreciate this song. We do not tend to think about death in everyday life. We are too busy living to think about death.

This past year, I have not been able to avoid death. It has been front and center in my face for the past 15 months. I have lost so many people to COVID. If bad luck comes in 3’s, I have reached it. COVID deaths, job loss, and identity theft. The pandemic has been life changing.

A few months ago, I started a photo project to curate my photos into a collection of the greatest hits of my life. I now have one photo album of 200 photos of my happiest memories. Curating the collection was an amazing experience. I made the book in case I end up in a nursing home or for when I die, I can lay there and look at my happiest moments.

While that may sound sad, in reality, it is making me very happy. I am enjoying the book now. It beings me such joy to remember and relive happy times in my life. My photo album reminds me to be grateful of all the wonderful things that have happened to me in life. Even though this past year has been downright horrid, I have had a lot of positives in my life up until this point.

Looking back on my greatest hits photo collection, I also realize that I have a lot to look forward to. There have been a lot of huge changes in my life as the result of the pandemic. You don’t grow and change without a little pain.

As difficult as things may be right now, with no job and no unemployment due to identity theft, I realize that I am actually living my best life right now.

I am secure in who I am as a person. I have goals in life. My goals are simple – to keep my family together and to keep us all safe. When I do die, what I will remember and think about is my family. It won’t matter what jobs I had or what I did for a living.

Work is what you do to pay the bills so that you can live your best life.

My best life is being home with the cats and running. In order to meet both those goals, I have to keep us all housed and together. I have to keep us all COVID-free in a reckless world that mistakenly thinks the pandemic is over. (Far from it – in fact, this is the most dangerous phase of the pandemic yet.)

My future goals are to continue to work remote permanently. I want to be home with my cats so we are together and safe. As long as I am doing respectable work that pays the bills, it doesn’t really matter what I do. All that matters is that we are together.

I recently found two part-time jobs that both allow me to work remotely. I have started one job, and I love it! I have returned to teaching, which is truly my passion. The other part-time job is a remote office position that does not start until late June. I am confident that I can make it work, as it is a prestigious and professional company. They value my skills and my life by allowing me to work from home. In return, I will work very hard for them. I value the privilege that remote work bring in allowing me to realize my goals and dreams.

Losing my job was the biggest threat to my life, family, health and safety I have ever faced. However, it has resulted in great opportunity. I now have the opportunity to live my best life. 

Being able to keep the cats together and outlive them is my only goal. It’s pretty easy to be happy in life when you are happy about what you have and don’t want much. I just want to keep the cats and I together and take care of them.

I am doing my best to pick up the pieces of the worst situation and move on. 

No matter what the future may bring, I can confidently say that I am reaching for my dreams and achieving them. I am truly living my best life now.

80 Photographs

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

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There are literally thousands of photographs that I have taken and saved. Some are on cell phones, some are saved in my cloud account, and some are print only. The prints are mostly from the days when cameras had actual film and you had to wait a week for it to be developed. I have negatives for photos also.

I had quite a few photo albums and they took up a lot of space. In my minimizing, I purchased two photo storage cases that now hold all my physical photos. The two photo cases take up much less space than all of the photo albums. The photos are in their own case by category – person, event or trip. 

The photos I look at the most are the ones that are framed and actually in the house. These are the photos that hang on the walls or sit on the mantle. Sometimes I look at the photos on my phone.

I’ve had some up and down feelings lately in the pandemic. Part of me feels positive that I will live long enough to be in a care home. I think that if that were to happen, I want one photo album of my very best memories. It is easier to look at a physical photo album than it is to scroll through electronic photos. I looked at my photos a lot more when they were in the bulky albums.

Part of me feels negative and I don’t know how I am going to survive the pandemic. I just don’t see myself being alive 15 years from now when all the cats are gone. That part of me thinks that if I was in a hospital or (more likely) dying at home, the last thing I want to make sure I see is photos of my cats.

Even though I down-sized years ago and got rid of all the photo albums, I am realizing that the only way I actually look at photos is if they are in an album. 

I purchased a photo album that holds 80 photos. The album also gives space to write a note next to each photo. This aspect is important to me.

I have decided to go through the many thousands of photographs I have and curate them down into the 80 photographs that mean the most to me. I want a collection of the best memories of my life.

Starting with the photos that are actually in the house, I am realizing that I have had a pretty great life. I have had some amazing moments and memories. I have done great things. It is going to be very challenging to curate the best of my life into 80 photos.

At first, I started by making a formula. Given 80 photos, this is the formula I started with:

50 photos of the cats (5 cats – Kitty, Kip, Jude, Simon, Jolene), which means 10 photos of each cat, including photos of them in combinations i.e. Kitty & Kip, Kitty & Jude, Jude & Simon, etc.

10 photos of my camping trips

10 photos of my races – this one is a challenge with 18 medals and (hopefully) counting

10 photos of “other” – my once in a lifetime baseball game, trip to the MidWest, favorite photos not associated with the above categories

While this formula is a good start, I am quickly realizing that I have a lot more than 80 photos. I am either going to have to be ruthless curating, or find an album that holds 100? Photos instead.

The goal is that when the project is done, I will have one photo album of the cats and the highlights of my life. I want one place I can turn to in good times and bad times to relive the highlight reel of my life.

I guess the fact that I have so many good memories and photos from those memories is a good problem to have.

I am still going through photos, so I am not sure if I will take the curate ruthlessly or buy a larger photo album route. I do know that there will only be one photo album when I am done.

This project is turning out to be a lot bigger than I initially thought. It is also a lot more emotional that I thought. It is a good thing to relive positive memories in a challenging time. I have had a good life. It’s just kind of sad to think I may not survive the pandemic and that all the good times are behind me.

At this point, I am trying to remain positive. I am thoroughly enjoying going through my photo collection.

Has anyone else taken on a similar project for yourself or a loved one? Have you provided an older family member with memory issues with a photo album that is a highlight reel of their life? That is basically what I am trying to do for myself. 

Right now, I am trying to focus on 80 photographs. That may expand to be 100 or more. The limit will definitely be under 200. I probably should have figured out my photo count before purchasing a photo album. 

If you could only use so many photos to tell the story of your life and your best memories, how many would there be?