What’s with all these photos?

Whizzing across the country from Cardiff to Nottingham, I’m going to take this space between places to celebrate the fact that I deleted roughly 6000 photos from my phone today. That feels like an achievement worth blogging about, right?

As I scrolled through my very clogged phone, staring at photos from as far back as 2018, I found myself smiling often, each little photo a memory of an event which took place in my life. Some were sweet. Some were sad. Some were screenshots of quotes from Instagram which I felt were full of wisdom at the time, but, on reflection, were just a bunch of words.*

*Also there were a surprising amount of frog pictures.

As I scrolled, letting my phone sync up to the cloud service (ahh I miss the days where I could transfer directly from phone to computer – simpler times), it occurred to me that I wasn’t really sure why I took all these photos. Yes, they are a nice memory. But what exactly did I intend to do with them, apart from glancing at them occasionally?

I turns out the answer was throw them onto my PC in an unsorted chaotic mess. The DOOM box* folder deep in the recesses of my hard drive. To be sorted one day. To remember the ‘good old days’ and then… I don’t know. Delete them, I suppose.

*DOOM stands for “didn’t organise only moved”. A very popular activity among us neurodivergent types.

Now my phone library has two photos in it. One of a poem I wrote this morning, which I sent to Julie so she could admire how creative I am and how lucky she is to be married to me (don’t think it worked) and the other is the selfie I just took to throw into this blog post because I like a picture to be at the top.

I kid you not, my phone actually feels lighter. I am worried if I let it go, it might float away. Maybe that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

As my digital decluttering continues, I find myself more interested in being outside. In nature. In seeing the sunrise in the morning. I’m trying to take notice of the here and now, and not necessarily take a photo of it.

We shall see how it goes.