4 ms·

I started keeping a journal after my wife's family got scans of her grandfather's journal and seeing the fun all the aunts and uncles had reading them. The jou

I started keeping a journal after my wife's family got scans of her grandfather's journal and seeing the fun all the aunts and uncles had reading them. The journal I keep is for my family. It's very brief, just date-events and (mostly) happy memories. I want to keep and share with my kids in the future. I find it's great for keeping track of my kids' developmental milestones, a perspective on time, and seeing just how much life my family squeezes in to a year. There are notes for myself, but I use a cryptic code so only I understand them (my wife's grandfather apparently had a similar system that the kids have never deciphered). Google Photos has been a big enhancement as well. I make it a point to take gigs of photos every month, keep them backed up, and also enjoy them in the Google Photos timeline and scrapbooks it algorithmically generates. Before Google Photos, I was using Flickr, but that was a more manual process. Additionally, my wife and I combine our photo collections every quarter, which makes the digital family photo album a huge library of videos and moments in time that I visit all the time. Strange thing is... before the digital camera on my phone and starting my journal on Google Drive, I have this big semi-empty place in my life history. I've tried to fill it in by sifting through old emails, scanning my parents' photo-albums, etc, but it's much thinner and the memories are therefore somewhat dimmer. I have a friend who said he will not start a journal of his daughter's life because he would feel so bad about not documenting her first two years and all the memories he would realize he'd lost. I didn't think about using my phone camera on a daily-basis until my first son was over a year-old. As a result we have much less of his first year documented, and I do feel a significant loss for failing to preserve that.

ashark 10y ago
You may already be aware of this, but, from the experience of watching old home movies while my mom digitized them: if you're recording video or taking pictures at least in part for your kids, be aware that they may care more about seeing old you and other relatives than they will old them, so try to turn the camera on yourselves once in a while.
- BooneJS 10y ago
  Many people in the world do not have trouble turning a camera on themselves, but this is solid advice for those with introspective tendencies.
  - ashark 10y ago
    It can be really easy when filming/photographing your kids to forget this, in my experience, at least. Parents seem to focus on the kids to the exclusion of everything else. I make a conscious effort to get my wife or other adults in frame with the kid(s) when possible, now that I know what it's like to watch old home movies when you're all growed up. Also the occasional slow sweep of a room or other context before/after a shot so maybe they'll get a few more "oh wow, I remember that chair!"-type moments than they otherwise might. No one ever thinks to film the furniture :-)
    - ideonexus 10y ago
      These are all great points and ideas. And I'm instantly thinking of things I'm not capturing enough of in my videos and pictures. Thank you all!
  - 0xCMP 10y ago
    Not entirely true. Maybe those without kids, but I personally hate taking selfies. I only do it because of the kind of idea above. I typically want to see photos of myself later, but I'd rather remember what I saw so my memories come back. There are years where I have basically 10 good photos of me, but maybe a 1000 great photos of everything else.

ashark 10y ago

You may already be aware of this, but, from the experience of watching old home movies while my mom digitized them: if you're recording video or taking pictures at least in part for your kids, be aware that they may care more about seeing old you and other relatives than they will old them, so try to turn the camera on yourselves once in a while.

BooneJS 10y ago
Many people in the world do not have trouble turning a camera on themselves, but this is solid advice for those with introspective tendencies.
- ashark 10y ago
  It can be really easy when filming/photographing your kids to forget this, in my experience, at least. Parents seem to focus on the kids to the exclusion of everything else. I make a conscious effort to get my wife or other adults in frame with the kid(s) when possible, now that I know what it's like to watch old home movies when you're all growed up. Also the occasional slow sweep of a room or other context before/after a shot so maybe they'll get a few more "oh wow, I remember that chair!"-type moments than they otherwise might. No one ever thinks to film the furniture :-)
  - ideonexus 10y ago
    These are all great points and ideas. And I'm instantly thinking of things I'm not capturing enough of in my videos and pictures. Thank you all!
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  Not entirely true. Maybe those without kids, but I personally hate taking selfies. I only do it because of the kind of idea above. I typically want to see photos of myself later, but I'd rather remember what I saw so my memories come back. There are years where I have basically 10 good photos of me, but maybe a 1000 great photos of everything else.