Blogging, scrapping, and the meaning of life

Once I became a mom, I joined the camera-toting hordes of people who believe their kids are making history every minute of every day.

When my children were infants, I shot a roll of film a week. I kept a baby calendar marking milestones and a lavishly illustrated baby book. I lined them up for professional photographs, and in addition to keeping up my own photo albums, I created photo albums for each of them.

I never did buy a video camera, though I occasionally recorded my children’s voices on cassette tapes. My own journal writing, which I’d been faithfully doing for more than 20 years, tapered off with the arrival of my son and practically ground to a halt with the birth of my daughter.

When it was time to pack for our overseas move, I had to figure out what to do with the thousands of photos, old letters, and journals that had chronicled my life. They filled a large closet from top to bottom.

And then once I settled in Belgium, I took up blogging and scrapbooking, joining millions of people worldwide writing about their days and posting snapshots in elaborate books and online albums. The deeper I get into blogging and scrapbooking, the more I'm fascinated by their popularity. 

Why do we do it?

Why do we seem to be becoming increasingly obsessed with documenting our lives?

On the surface,  it appears to be simply about preserving memories or expressing ourselves artistically or creatively. But I wonder if there isn’t something bigger going on. Are our blogs, scrapbooks, photo albums and discs our way of stopping time and anchoring ourselves in a rapidly changing world? Are they a way to justify our existence—to physically demonstrate that our daily lives mattered?

Some scrapbooks and blogs seem to be an attempt to recreate lives with a more colorful cast of characters—an attempt to whitewash the mundane, portray reality in a flattering light, and write a better story than the one we’re living. They’re like PR campaigns tuned to a positive key message. Other blogs and scrapbooks seem more authentic, an attempt to record what time and discretion might bury and to connect with one’s self and one’s peers. Both groups talk about extending that connection beyond their lifetimes and into the next generation, imagining they’re casually writing a history or biography that someone down the line will appreciate.

This of course presumes that the next generation will care about the minutiae of our lives. I already carry the photographic legacy of my grandparents, who had their first child in 1918, and my parents, who had theirs in 1946. The number of photos generated increases with each subsequent generation. How many will be too many to save? Who will have the space and interest to store and care for generations of memories? I wonder if the scrapbooks and photo albums that we’re laboring over may end up in landfills years from now. Or maybe there will be a special recycling bin for them.

I know from experience that we can’t carry the past, physically or mentally, too far into the future. The truth is that future generations will be more concerned with living their own lives than sharing ours. They won’t want our pasts crowding their closets, basements, or hard drives.

Or will they? What do you think?

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

August 29, 2006

Comments

[JMo]

My grandmother gave me a photo album for X-mas a few years ago. She had somehow come up with pictures from nearly every year of my life til that point in time. Though my parents have been divorced since I was 4 and not on particularly good terms, she even managed to get pics from my mom to fill in the gaps from her collection.
It is one of the best gifts I have ever received. I think pictures, especially still images, are our saviours from the ravages of time on our memory. I was only 31 or 32 when I got that album but I had already "forgotten" so much of what was represented in those images. As I paged through it that first time, I remembered so much that I had thought was lost in the depths of my memory.
Images of our own lives are worth far more than the proverbial 1000 words...

[Lisa]

I think the future generations will want and even marvel at them. Think of the hordes who flock to museums to see such things every day. Think what notalgia and wistfulness you feel when you look at life back in the early 1900's. I think it's a toss-up whose memories will be preserved and whose will be forgotten or destroyed, but I hope whoever has the honor of having their photos displayed all those years in the future* is a good representative of who we are here today in the early twenty-first century. In that light, what we're doing now, blogging, photography, and scrapbooking are very important. It will show future generations a glimpse of who we were.

*most likely a woman- think of this! :)

[Jenny]

I blog and journal because I want to leave a little peice of me behind. So that if I forget to tell Hailey something she'll be able to go back and hear me even when I'm gone.

[Shirl Grrrl]

I wish with all my heart that my grandparents and other ancestors had kept journals and scrapbooks especially as I find myself digging and digging into their lives with little to go on. A forgotten photograph in somebody's old trunk is like a treasure. I think it's very important to pass down what we can of our lives to not only our children but to our grandchildren and on down the line. Every time I come across framed photos of people long gone in antique stores I become so sad. These people are somebody's ancestors and here they are hanging on a wall in a dingy junk store. So, you're right, somebody didn't care to keep them but there are a great many that would have.

[Char]

We are about to celebrate my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary in Ireland. I have been given the task of taking alomost 100 years worth of family photos and putting them all together onto a CD for everyone. I am truly fascinated by family resemblances, finding out how life was back then and how the whole family weaves together.

Now, I personally have boxes of photos of my own and now thanks to technology I have a boatload on my hard drive, but one day I hope to go through and pull out the highlights, package them and give a copy to each of my kids.

[wordgirl]

I think you're right for the most part. However, there will be times when people want questions answered and the information you provide will help accomplish that. A couple of years ago I was going through my grandfather's papers/pictures (Germans save everything)and stray bits of stuff he saved. Some of it I could figure out, but much of it is still a mystery and there's no one left to help me get the answers. Those answers are my past just as they are his. To have a recording of a voice or a scrapbook that clearly explains every event in it is a treasure.

[Arabella]

Personally, I love looking at albums full of old photos of people I know. I'm really, really grateful to my parents for having made such a record of my own childhood. I like the idea of future generations being able to become familiar with the past through these media.

[Nancy]

I think it's easier to appreciate the memoirs and records left by our predecessors as we get older ourselves. I know as a younger person I was not as interested in my grandmother's stories of her youth, but as I got older, I cherished those stories so much. I don't think we always see the parallels between our own struggles in life and those of the relatives that came before us -- but really, although the circumstances of life are different, the essence of life is much the same.

So yes, I like to think my descendents will at least have some interest in my life (and my parents' lives, and my grandparents' lives) if they have access to historical information, pictures, and memoirs.