I printed twenty pictures.
I had become the curator of a large digital museum that nobody visits. A chronicle of my life stuck in storage … a trip to Africa, another trip to the Bahamas, parties, weddings, graduations, our first grandchild! So many print-worthy shots and I was paralyzed. There are 4,522 photos on my phone! My friend Tammy scoffed at that number. She even added a “whoop-de-do.” She has 14,721 photos on her phone! But to me, 4,522 photos are overwhelming, and reason enough not to look at them.
My son recently gave me printed pictures of our first granddaughter. I treasure the photos and savor each moment I look at her darling face. That was my motivation.
First, I set some rules. I would spend one hour selecting the photos. I set a timer … I love to set a timer. I would only select photos that made me remember something. If I immediately wanted to tell the story of that photo, I would print it. They wouldn’t necessarily be the best photos, not the most important photos … and perhaps not even the most flattering photos. I would not scrutinize ten shots of the same thing to find the one that made my huge eyebags and crow’s feet look better. In her book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron reminds us that we may never look as good as we do today. We shouldn’t avoid printing pictures of ourselves, because in ten years, we will think we looked great! And since time has a tendency to warp up to light speed, ten years will pass in an instant.
The second motivation for printing the pictures was to remind myself of the good times that I’m living right now. A big part of my empty nest journey, my Expeditionvision, is overcoming the sadness that the life I spent decades creating is in the past. Positive psychology researchers tell us that deliberately reflecting on positive life events increases feelings of well-being. Psychologist Clay Routledge says that nostalgia does not mean living in the past. He describes nostalgia as something that can help us move forward by reminding us of what matters. Nostalgia doesn’t have to mean twenty years in the past; it can be last year. Or even last month!
Looking around my house, I realized that I have had the same pictures perched on the piano and posted on the fridge for years … and I’m talking years and years and years. I think I avoided replacing them because I was afraid that I would forget. That has been another theme of my empty nest journey. The fear that I would forget my life as a mom, and the time in my life when I felt like I mattered. However, the pictures had been there for so long that I didn’t really see them anymore.
I couldn’t bring myself to take the old photos out of the frames. That felt too much like putting them into storage, which is the opposite of what this experiment was trying to do. Besides, that would take too long. Instead, I moved the old photos into other rooms and replaced them with my newly printed photos and a plan to rotate them once they have been there so long that I stopped seeing them.
The way I did it. Proof of life.
This is part of what I’m calling Expeditionvision—my quest to find what a meaningful life looks like. One experiment per week: Possible strategies for a happier life. Trying things on purpose and paying attention to what happens. I’m not offering advice or giving instructions. I’m just sharing the way I did it. If there’s something that you’ve been wanting to try—but haven’t—I’d love to hear about it. I’m open to reader suggestions for future experiments.
Field Notes: For Paid Subscribers
Paid subscribers, I’ve added a short field notes section below with what surprised me the most, what I didn’t expect, what I might do next time, plus things I’m still working on.