I am that person that will take photos of everything on my phone. Food, scenery, pretty interior designs, great posters, funny videos... But I lost it all from my phone.
It was a late Sunday night last week, and I was supposed to be getting ready for bed. But as I was checking out the photos I had taken that day (it was lunch at an Indian restaurant), I noticed that my gallery of photos reduced to only five images. My SD card was faulty, and it had committed technological suicide.
I went into full panic mode - which felt like receiving the first four stages of grief at the same time. I was in denial that I had lost my photos. I was angry that I hadn't had the smarts to back my photos up. I was begging my phone to give me something back. I was depressed that all these memories were gone from my grasp.
After an hour of trying, I laid in bed, eyes wide open. I thought about the funny shots I took of my friends, of the silly work antics I had captured on video, and just the memories I had kept for so many years.
And even when I gave it to Boyfriend to try and save, he said it didn't look good. The cost to attempt to save it, without any promise of a return, was too high for me to consider.
My phone was no longer a precious vault of my life and in many ways I felt empty just like my phone's contents. What was I supposed to do without those images?
And that's what I realised - what was I supposed to do without it when all I did was keep it to myself?
Even though I physically lost it - I didn't necessarily lose it forever. I've got those memories to myself like its own gallery in my head. If I wanted to recall that time my workmates sang really bad karaoke in an weird dodgy Auckland bar, think of the dates I had with my boyfriend in front of various desserts, or remember the times my best friends and I played on swing-sets in the dark - I just have to do that. Remember it.
Those photos may have meant a lot to me, but the memories itself mean more.
So if there's two things to learn from this;
1) You don't need the photos to keep the memories.
2) But back up your photos for goodness sake.
[Photo: Unsplash]
