N.B. This is an archived Sunday Journal Club entry which I've edited.
Recently I have been interested in taking a conscious approach towards documenting my own life. Generally, this means journaling, taking pictures and videos and then organising that media in a structured and easily accessible way.
The reasons for this desire in me to do this is as follows:
- My memory is crap. A common example of this is when my friend’s bring up shared experiences and I worryingly often struggle to recall what happened.
- I am very sentimental. I love looking back on the past and conjuring up nostalgia. A picture can be a portal to an old version of yourself and help you reflect.
- Looking back at old photos and videos can help me stir my memory. It is a great solution to my sometimes poor memory and you can also share with close people in your life and connect over that.
- I have large gaps in my life where there isn’t much media of me. There are various reasons for this, having phones with poor cameras, shame, insecurity and also because I was sat at my pc a lot.
There are, however, some issues with this.
Firstly, there is not a straightforward way to do all of this. I’ve considered recording videos of my everyday life at university but I don’t want to lug a camera around recording everything. Getting all your media in one place would be ideal but that takes a lot of organisation. These aren’t insurmountable obstacles at all but at the same time the further I look into it the more questions come up, especially with storage. Although, that is part of the fun I suppose.
Another issue that is more troubling to me is not living in the moment. I love taking videos of funny silly things that happen but do I really want to witness those moments through my phone screen? There is a balance here. I feel that I didn’t take enough photos when I was younger and in my shift now I sometimes feel I take too many.
Taking out your phone can separate you from the present because now you don’t have full agency of your entire body. Your arm is being occupied by this thing. This device. What if you want to rugby tackle your mate out of nowhere. Maybe that thought wouldn’t cross your mind with a phone in your hand.
A compromise here is recording without looking at the camera. In my experience it is just the worst of both worlds. The actual footage you get isn't great because you aren't monitoring it and the phone recording is still in the back of my mind.
Journalling
Originally I wanted to journal to record events in my life. It started like that but then I realised it was more potent for me to document the inner rather than the external. It is a good way to get my thoughts in order.
My brain is constantly firing on all cylinders. Rapid thoughts enter and exit my brain constantly and it is just pure noise at times. I also get very easily distracted and struggle to focus on things but I have found journaling is a very cathartic way to release that energy. A lot of entries I have written are just garbage or in a very negative emotional state. At very low times it is easy to write endlessly.
I think the keys to useful emotional journaling are full confidence no one else will be able to read your entries, followed by pure honesty with yourself. The latter is harder than I would have thought. I catch myself not writing certain things down often.
Photography
The beauty of old videos is how much information they capture. You can see people's body language, the way they move and hear them speak.
Photos are equally beautiful to me for the same things they don't reveal. Its like they light a match for your imagination and your brain keeps the fire going. That single frame from the past, naybe an old portrait photo of your face, it is up to you and your imagination to colour in the rest of the detail. I love the surreal nature of photos.
Kind of like skate photos in magazines. They are the best in my opinion. You can capture moments which fly past in the video footage but help emphasise the technicality, height or pure fucking craziness of a trick. There is something magical about those action shots and I see old photos of other things in a similar way.
I don’t want to get stuck on the past looking over old photos but they help me realise how far I have come and how much further I can go. Looking over my journal and my old worries and how they have evaporated. Some persist which I can focus in on to help me realise what is truely important to me.
Sometimes scrolling through a camera roll is a nice opportunity to just laugh and reminisce. A good motivator to collect more memories and store them.
I would argue everything is worth documenting. I used to hold so much shame about myself that I wouldn’t do those things but getting older means I care less. That old photo of me, that was just who I was. Everything is constantly changing. My normal now, here in Bristol, it feels very routine but in a years time everything will look completely different. You get comfortable in your everyday life just as quickly as it can change. Sometimes I mourn that I can’t bathe in the nostalgia of certain times but I don’t think that is helpful either. Don’t get caught looking in the mirror.
It is worth forgetting some things in your life. Painful mistakes, embarrassing moments. I don’t think that to grow you need to have vivid memories of that shitty thing you said or did. My subconscious remembers too. I’m out of time to think of a glamorous ending so yeah great cool cheers for reading.