We all have goals for the new year. We want to eat healthy, get in shape, explore new places, try new foods, keep in touch with old friends, and quit that one bad habit.I’ve got goals like that, sure, but there’s something else, too.
This year, I want to record my life. Not by forcing myself to do something daily like take a self portrait or blog or journal but by really taking the time to somehoe record what’s going on, whatever way I feel like doing it at that moment. Photos, blog posts, scrapbooking layouts, letters to no one, journals full of words – I don’t want to focus this year on the mdium but the actual act of recording. Just getting it on paper and out of my head.
See, I’m someone who is oddly forgetful. I can remember every single word to a song from a musical I was in back in fifth grade but ask me which little town I took that photo of the house with the yellow shutter back in October, and I’m clueless. Sure, it’s probably got something to do with the fact that it’s just a photo of a house I saw once and not a song I had drilled into my head by repeating it over and over. And that house has no memories tied to it. But that doesn’t mean I should forget it. I have the photo but everything else with it is gone.
Memories should be preserved, if only so you can look back and laugh at how silly you were back then. I want 2012 to be the first year I really record what I’ve seen, ate, regretted, enjoyed, and felt ambivalent about. I want to look back in ten years and actually have some idea of what was going on in my life and not just the highlights. I’ve got plenty of photos from big trips, family gatherings. You know, the stuff you’re supposed to take photos and write blog posts and make scrapbook pages about.
But my life happens(and changes) outside of those big, important events. I want to focus on recording the little moments between the big ones.
I’m not sure what form any of this will take and, for a control freak like me, that’s pretty terrifying. I’m just going to relax and record things when they happen. And maybe some of that recording will get shown off here. Maybe almost none of it will.
But, this year, 2012. I will record my life.
