Cameras

January 24th: Today I am grateful for cameras and my love of photography.

My memory has never been first-rate.  It’s a frustrating trait, a trait I attribute to multi-tasking and difficulty living in the present moment, a trait that prevents me from being a viable Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy contender.

There are a few odd exceptions, of course.  I might get lucky and recall the name of a book or movie.  I have a peculiar ability to remember clothes – what I wore the day I took a cooking class in Italy, or the day I flew to Halifax for vacation, or the day I attended a friend’s wedding.  I can tell you every little detail about a process or the way a piece of software works when I’m wearing my business analyst hat and in the thick of implementation, though these details are quick to leave once the project is complete.  Back in the day before computers replaced our brains I could remember tons of phone numbers.  But otherwise my memories are of feelings, impressions, and generalities.  It’s not the kind of memory that paints a scene or remembers a dialogue or replays a sequence of events.

All the photos I have, and believe me I have a lot, help me to remember the story of my life and more importantly the characters in the story of my life.