The One Personal Project I'm Willing to do Right Now
Depending on where you are in life – newlywed in your 30’s, working professional parent in your 40’s, approaching retirement in your 70’s or anything in between, chances are that this pandemic has affected your life in some sort of significant way. I was on a Zoom call last week with some other Photo Managers and they were saying how their clients are just relishing in this extra time that they have at home to go through their photo collections, put their kids to work on it, and finally organize their mess of digital or print photos.
I looked at another organizer, who, like me, has young children at home, and we shared the same expression – “Yeah right, not us. And certainly not our clients.” If you are in a household with young kids at home and dual working parents who are playing the role of teacher, while trying to maintain a productive work schedule, there is ZERO extra time. So, going through a lifetime collection of photos is definitely NOT something you can squeeze into an already hectic day.
There is one project, though, that I am taking on during this pandemic. It happens to be time sensitive and is super simple to do…
I don’t have a name for the project yet, but it will be something along the lines of:
Our Covid Diaries
Learning to Shelter-In-Place
Staying-In
Coronacation 2020
2020-PART I – Living Through a Pandemic
You get the point, right? In a nutshell, I am keeping all things COVID-19 organized together so that at the end of this “journey”, I can put it all into a book and print it up for posterity. From the funny screenshots to the photos of my kids eLearning, to encouraging Facebook posts to my journal entries.
I also asked my kids to do some journaling – either in the form of writing, or drawing pictures. All of these tidbits will be compiled into one central location and will be the story that I will look back on 5-10-15 years from now. And someday I will sit with my grandchildren and say, “Oh, I remember that.” And, these are the memories that I will cherish when this is all over.
Someday we will wonder how we passed the time. We will be curious what we were thinking, and how we were feeling. So, it’s important to jot down the story of what is happening right now. And, whether I create something from it immediately, or have to wait a while until I have more time (ie, when I’m not playing the role of teacher), at least I am taking the steps right now so that it’s all ready to go. I encourage everyone to create something to remember this by. Whether it’s a journal that you are writing in, a folder that is collecting photos and articles, or a digital scrapbook like I’m embarking on, this is going to be a significant part of history. How do you want to remember it?