I'm not sure exactly what got me started, but last night I began digging through my collection of photos and videos through the years. Ah, actually, now that i think of it, I know exactly what got me started. Someone PM'ed me on facebook and wanted to know if he could join my group in our perennial Killer Breakfast schtick at Gencon this year. We got to talking about past years of the event and I needed to look up my pictoral history to even remember what had happened and when. There's a tendency for all of it to get jumbled inside my head. It's not like I've actually forgotten what happened, but it's hard to recall in what order and what year it occurred.

As I was digging through the pictures and video, I stumbled across a horror. For some reason, I couldn't find any pictures from my '10 trip, neither the visit to Chicago nor Gencon afterward. The video files for that year were also missing and also the videos for past trips to various places. Now, I've never been very good at record keeping when it comes to these things, especially when returning from one of these trips. I'm usually exhausted upon getting home and will sleep for days on end before recovering. Add to the fact that last year was not a good one as far as pain and other issues went and I guess it's not a surprise that I let all of this slide. I also never posted a blog entry recapping my trip, meaning that there was no need to ever organize the pictures and videos like normal.

I spent a hour or so in a panic, rushing around my room trying to find my netbook, portable harddrives, and video recorders, hoping the data was still around somewhere and just mislaid. I think I was able to find most of the videos after an exhaustive search but the photos are nowhere to be found. I'm starting to think that I might not have ever downloaded them from the camera. The problem there is that I loaned my camera to my sister for numerous overseas trips she's taken since last year. I never gave her any instructions about what to do with the pictures already on the memory card and she never broached the subject. All I can do now is hope she still has the camera somewhere and didn't end up purging half a year worth of pictures and memories.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find that viewing pictures often sparks memories that I had forgotten. I remember upon seeing the images but I seriously doubt I could have spontaneously recalled the event on my own. I wonder if this is simply the first few steps down the road to senility. I sometimes become exasperated with my mom when she can't remember an event from just a few months ago even when I remind her about it. All of that tells me that maybe I should take the effort, no matter how annoying at the time, to snap more pictures. God knows my life is generally pretty empty as it is and it'd be a shame to lose out on the small number of interesting things that do happen.