Culling my Cloud Footprint

Apparently when George Eastman invented the Brownie camera people did not understand why anyone needed a personal handheld camera. So he created a marketing plan and here we are 124 years later. People take pictures of their food for others to thumbs up on social media. Who knows what Eastman would think about that.

I understand wanting to have evidence of your life, your doings, your thoughts. That is, after all, one of my motivations to write letters to my children - but then I realized that my website, my postings, all of this is predicated on huge servers being kept cold with fossil fuels.

Is my blog worth the cooling servers? Are the thousands of pictures I have in the cloud worth it? Will my (great-)grandchildren shake their fists at me from caves?

I don’t know. But I wanted to do something. So I started culling the articles on this site - going back to the beginning and deleting those that didn’t speak to me anymore. Then I realized, that most of them still spoke to me. Okay, so instead I printed them off - just to have one set - a hard copy of my written efforts over the years. In case in a few months I want to try another cull.

Now I turn my efforts to the pictures and videos. Currently there are many many videos. This is my fall/winter project, to organize videos into memory sticks with years. Deleting those videos that no longer serve. I will delete all of the pictures that are not in the photo books.

It is hubristic to think anyone would be interested in these videos other than our immediate family. But I have a vision of a Sunday in January, popcorn, and love. “Momma! Look at my cheeks! They were so pudgy!”

“Bean! You are dancing with a diaper on! You look so silly!”

“Oh Dragon, don’t say anything yet. There is a video of you walking with a poop in your pants that makes laugh every single time.”

Thank you cooling centers for my Sunday afternoon vision. Sigh. Both And.