This morning in the shower I was thinking about a code problem at work, like you do, and happened upon a solution.
As soon as I had rinsed off the Himalayan Pink Salt body wash, I got out of the shower, dried my hands, and grabbed my phone. I popped open the voice memo app to quickly record my thoughts for later.
This is something I do often. I'll record notes about work, writing, code ideas, sounds around me I think are funny or memorable.
Sometimes after I listen to them later I delete them. But often I hang on to them, knowing I'll savor them later.
That happened today. After I recorded my work notes I went diving through old recordings. I found among other things:
- A nice voice note my ex Kacie and I recorded for our friend Miss Jessica
- A recording of the elevator voice announcing Missy and I had arrived at the Lido Deck on the Carnival Valor
- A fiction idea I had recorded about six years ago
I love this sort of digital nostalgia. The files don't take up very much room on my phone, and they give me this instant hit, this sense of my personal history and longevity, each time I stumble across them.
On my computer I have an old video of my cats when they were about six months old. They are eleven years old now! Sometimes it boggles my mind that so much time has passed.
Personal history is a big deal for me. Because my dad wasn't a very good person, certain traumatic events in my past really tainted a huge portion of my childhood. My past has been previously a touchy, painful area. Things I thought to be true were not, and never had been. At one point in my life I felt like I had no reliable past to look back on, and that was a bitter feeling indeed.
But as I get older, each day I'm making more and more memories which I treasure. I'm not a very materialistic person, I don't set much stock in things. My aunt says that a good life is made of moments and memories. She's right. Every time I dig up one of these old voices and hear it again, I feel happy.