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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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Revisiting The Outside World

This post is an update to some thoughts I had almost four years ago, “Returning To The Outside World“. A lot of what I said in that post has changed in the intervening time, a lot of the sentiment has stayed the same. I decided to update it here, to reflect my current situation.

I still like to think, and I still need community. We all do. But what that community looks like has changed a lot over the years. After spending another “insular” winter inside in 2018 with a newborn, and what I now recognize as depression and anxiety, I all but lost most of the people who had been around to count on.

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Failure Is A Big Deal

The following is the script I wrote myself for a speech given to a group of 5th-8th grade girls at the culmination of their time at Camp Infinity coding camp, put on my the Michigan Council for Women in Technology. I can say the actual talk was only about 70% on script, but these are the points I raised. After the presentation I led an activity databending and creating art through hexcode manipulation, using trial and error.

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Where I Need To Be

I’ve been noticing lately that I’m finding myself exactly where I need to be in different parts of my life. Hindsight is 20-20 but I’m even beginning to recognize it in the moment as well.

Last year, when I desperately wanted to grow my family after finally moving out of an apartment, my sister helped me find the perfect little puppy for our lifestyle, in the perfect timing for us to spend glorious weeks off enjoying him. Continue reading “Where I Need To Be”

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Preparing To Move

Change is hard. Some people like change, some are even addicted to change, but for me it’s hard.

I tend to avoid change for that reason, along with my inherent laziness and procrastination. Small changes aren’t immune to my avoidance either. I would rather spend an extra five minutes every morning instead of going to get my hair cut, because the change isn’t worth the effort. These types of mental compromises happen more subconsciously than intentionally. I’m really not against change, but something about the unknown factor freaks me out on a primal level. Continue reading “Preparing To Move”

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Returning To The Outside World

Over the course of the past 12 months, I’ve felt very insular. I’ve been sequestered in my apartment and made a plethora of excuses to avoid going out. Some valid, some just excuses. It’s been a long year, and as a person who thrives on time to think, I’ve spent a lot of that time in introspection.

I’m starting to learn though, that I still need people. I need community. I need to be surrounded sometimes, by others who can carry me up and out of a funk. As much as I claim to be an introvert, being buoyed by people around me is what is starting to bring me back to a healthy mental state.

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How To Say No

People Pleasers unite! Sometimes I feel like I can do anything and everything that I am asked to do, and volunteer for even more. It’s part of what I need to work on when I invest in others to my own detriment, I just want to help, and so if someone asks, it is really hard to say “no” to a well-meaning request. This is especially true if I am signing myself up for something I know I can do better or more easily than the person who asked me to do it.

Does this mean I’m a bad delegator? Sometimes. Other times my need for control manifests in telling others what they need to do instead of just doing it for them. I’ve been getting better and better at knowing when I should trust someone else to take care of a project for me, but a lot of times I still want to take on the responsibility, because I believe I’ll enjoy it. Continue reading “How To Say No”