This is a post in two parts. First, I’ll show you mine. Then I’ll explain why you should do this, too. Your future self will thank you.

With My Little Eye

I’m about to share a photo with you that was taken on March 27, 2009.

Before you judge me too harshly based on this photo, I’d like to mention that this was snapped near the bottom of a downward spiral. A mid-20’s life crisis, so to speak.

In 2009, every day was either a total party or a total disaster. My marriage was on the brink of collapse. I’d fallen in love with my best friend, who was also on a course for catastrophe. I’d spent the last couple years getting stoned constantly. My anxiety ran high. I was working all the time with very little to show for it. My heart was stretched thin; my mental health, poor.

They say your surroundings become an outward manifestation of your state of mind. That rings extremely true for me. This photo is the proof.

Clearly, there’s a lot happening here.

Obviously, there’s pipes and paraphernalia scattered about. That box ain’t full of cappuccino mix.

Overloaded, dirty ashtrays. A plate with smears of chocolate. An open bag of beef jerky. There’s articles of clothing, jewelry, lotions, mint gum, Chapstick, pheromone perfume, music CD collections, camera bags. Papers and notebooks and a photo album. Djarum Blacks and a paycheck. You can see one of the surround-sound speakers piled on top of stuff, because loud music was a must-have and played an integral part in all of this.

There’s two cups of soda because my best friend was partaking in this chaos sitting right next to me. I wish the computer screen was up so I could see what we were working on at the time.

Why would I share this photo? Because it’s raw, it’s real. It’s who I was at that moment in time. It’s a hundred fleeting little memories captured in one mechanical whiz-click of a Cybershot.

Nothing in this photo remains in my life now, 13 years later. As a matter of fact, most of it was gone about one year after this image was captured.

Without this chaotic moment preserved in image, I might have completely forgotten that beautiful artisan glass bong (and the funny story behind it), or the watch I made with the Italian charm band, or the flip phone I adored because it had the MP3 player built into the front.

I might have forgotten the spicy warmth of smoking Blacks, or the way we could demolish a pan of brownies in one sitting. I might have forgotten that there were four people in the house that night. And later, just two in the living room at this desk until the sun came up, tempting fate.

See, when I took this picture, it was probably because the overwhelming mess (both mentally and literally) had become humorous. You could either laugh at it or cry about it, so I probably just hit the bong, giggled, and snapped it.

Or, equally as likely, I was getting ready to shoot some photos and simply pointed and clicked straight in front of me to test the camera settings, with no further thought to it.

Either way, this silly little snapshot strikes me right in the feels, even so many years later. This was a moment of my life that I need to remember, though sometimes want to forget.

"The parting was vague, because the separation still seems unreal."
- Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

You Must Do This

There are things in your life that you want to remember, and there are things in your life that you want to forget. No matter how your emotions are tied to a moment, it is still a moment in your life. What fun you experience today, you might look back on with sadness in a decade. What you’re going through right now could feel like an obstacle in your path, but may be a milestone in retrospect, eventually.

Every little moment in our lives matters but the majority of them are forgotten and lost along the way.

For whatever reason I snapped that photo, obviously it wasn’t meant to post to Facebook (er, well, Myspace was the thing back then) or to share with anyone. I appreciate it so much now just as a memento for myself. I was there, we were there, that’s what we did. There’s the proof.

I encourage you to do the same. In fact, I insist. Your future self will thank you, I promise. Even if it’s hard to look back on.

Stop what you’re doing and shoot the moment in front of you. Your workspace, your coffee table, whatever’s near and lived in.

Before you purge your closet, snap a photo of the disarray. Before your kids clean up their bedrooms, snap a photo of the mess. Before you send that pile of junk to Goodwill, take a picture of it. If the kitchen is in shambles because you just cooked something epic, grab a shot of the aftermath before you clean up.

Don’t just shoot selfies and posed photographs. Take pictures of the everyday surroundings, even if they’re cluttered, dirty, taboo, or otherwise. These random moments are your life. Stash them away in a safe place on your hard drive. Don’t overthink it. You will be giving yourself a very important gift when you come across them years down the road and play your own game of I Spy.