Save Your Photos

Soggy Books

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit obsessed with looking back at my past experiences. My calendar is a pinned tab on my browser and I use it just as much to look at what I’ve been up to as for scheduling the future. I love looking at old photos or files for the memories they bring up. When I read my writing from years earlier I can still put myself into the frame of mind I was in when I wrote them.

Even after purging a lot of the physical evidence, I still have totes worth of things I’ve produced over the years. Somewhere in my parents’ house are floppy disks with typing and drawing I did as a toddler. And I know I’ve got some of my most challenging exams and papers from college stashed away for when I want to be proud of my accomplishments.

Photos and videos probably make up the biggest percentage of the mementos I worry about preserving. Nothing makes reliving a memory easier than having a snapshot full of the important details, after all, a picture’s worth a thousand words. The switch to digital photography did nothing to curb the build of my collection, especially thanks to my mom who never deletes any bad pictures, even the blurriest and most embarrassing.

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Staying Afloat In A Sink Or Swim World

As part of the summer activities in this household we participated in swimming lessons. Not your average YMCA class, we put our child in an Infant Swimming Resource Self-Rescue course. These lessons are different than the “Mommy & Me” style relaxed waterplay that happens in a group class. They are individual sessions, one-on-one with the instructor where the infant is taught how to relax into a back float in order to self-rescue instead of drowning.

While it’s a pretty scary thing to put your baby into the water with (what amounts to) a stranger while they struggle to learn the techniques, I felt like for our family, having a pool in the backyard, I would feel less panicky about unlikely scenarios if we prepare for handling them. I forced the dog into the pool last summer so that I knew he’d be able to find his way out if he fell in, why do things differently with my child?
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When Mentors Move On

I was recently reminded how far I have come. Last year in September I was juggling the on-boarding of a fourth addition to our team in as many months, reviewing code written by team mates on the other side of the globe, and still getting to work on any tasks myself. Two years ago I was struggling with my involvement the decision to terminate a new hire I had been training who was not a good fit for the role. Three years ago I was working on some of the first projects I took a lead in designing and implementing, which turned out to be some of the most frustrating projects at the company for the year.

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