The Process Makes the Progress - Acceptance of Life's Fleeting Moments
One of my goals whenever I move into a more permanent space is to bring back photo albums. To be fair, I have never really done the whole photo album thing as an adult but I am old enough to know that it was a thing and to know that I want to make it a thing again.
I’ve always loved to take pictures. When I was a kid I had film cameras (like everyone else) and I would snap pictures of whatever I felt like and then have my mom send them in through the film mailing services or we’d head to Walmart and drop them off there.
What a strange thing that is almost forgotten. It makes me dig into the corners of my brain for other long lost forgotten memories like that, instilling the deepest feelings of nostalgia.
Side note - if you’re a 90s kid like me, check out Instagram accounts like irememberthatshit, millennial_misery, and 90skidz90s to get the nostalgia flowing.
Anyways, the concept of waiting for photos to get developed is very much a thing of the past. The excitement of receiving that package in the mail or knowing that it’s Thursday and time to go pick up your photos at Walmart is non-existent.
Sure, you can still use film cameras and get it developed but let’s be real, none of us do.
We recently went on a trip and I took my “real camera,” which is my DSLR camera. The excitement that I felt when I got my first DSLR was next level. I was in high school and boy did I create with that thing. I was taking photos of everything and anything. I took a digital photography classes and felt so much connection to my camera.
As it goes, things change. Phones got better cameras and the convenience of a phone in my pocket vs a big clunky DSLR camera was enough for me to slowly step away from my DSLR.
Right now I’m in the process of rekindling that relationship. The convenience of digital photos and phone cameras has almost killed my photographic creativity. I still snap a lot of photos but it’s different. Now they just sit in the folders on my phone or memory card among the photos that are no good and screenshots that need deleted. It seems like so much extra work.
Plus, going back through and looking at them on a screen doesn’t spark the same joy as it does when you’re holding a thoughtfully put-together photo album. I think that the scrolling nature of social media has watered down that experience.
And, I think it’s just one of the many things that we’ve lost as we become more and more immersed in the digital world.
That takes us back to nostalgia.
Now of course, photo albums and things of the like are only nostalgic because they are no longer a part of daily life. Things change, time evolves, and that’s that. I get that. But in a way I feel like we’re erasing a lot of opportunities to sit with nostalgia because of the digital world. And in a lot of ways I understand why we try to do that. Do I think that it’s a good thing to do? No, not at all. But with technology taking over virtually every aspect of our lives, it has the potential to remove the time and space for that to take place.
I’ve recognized within myself that reminiscing and reflecting over things as simple as looking at pictures or recognizing when you’re in a moment that is fleeting (they all are) and then feeling immense sadness or panic about it is something that I’m trying (and failing) to avoid lately. I try avoid it because acceptance of it holds a hint of grief that I feel quite uncomfortable holding.
One thing that 2020 really taught me was how much grief is real, raw love. I knew that before, but now I really know that. It also taught me how much grief I can actually hold, regardless of if I want to or not.
One thing it didn’t teach me is how to walk through it and to not white knuckle my way through the coming years with the fear that more grief will be experienced.
I think that my desire to make photo albums is a way of processing all of that and coming to a healthy space with the essence of nostalgia.
Even just thinking about it has me understanding things in a new way. At the surface I want to bring more presence into my days and be able to reflect on the past with feelings of sentimental affection. I want to bring intention to the photographs that I take and respect that artful expression that I have loved since I was a child.
But I’m also recognizing that on a deep level it’s so hard for me (and many of us) to do that because there are areas within us that still have tender spots. Things that we’ve looked at and processed what feels like a million times, but needs to be dissected even more.
What if we do that in a different way?
I am in the processes of acceptance. Accepting life’s fleeting moments. Living in them without fear gripping me and threatening to steal my joy in exchange for feelings of longing before the moment even ends.
I’ve done lots of work around this all in more “traditional” senses and now I’m zooming out. I’m taking something I have loved for so long, and still love, and letting it be the medicine. Letting it guide me with each photo I snap, choose to print, and put into an album on a shelf.
The process makes the progress and it makes a beautiful book of memories to evoke that sweet nostalgia for years to come.
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