Today I did something I said I’d never do again, but an old habit got in the way of my new resolve. I picked up a packet… no… a box-full of hard-copy photos from the store. I’m embarrassed to say I now have 307 new prints to put into albums.
An old Chinese proverb says, “Habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.” As the wildlife in our basement continues to benefit from cobwebbing our 196 photo albums, I’m upstairs shackling myself with a cable that just wrapped around me 307 times. Now I have the substantial undertaking of putting these prints in books that I haven’t even bought yet. Worst of all, it’ll put us over the 200-album mark, a dubious honor.
What could possibly be the reason for such idiocy? I do have one. It’s the tiny but potent memory card inside my digital camera. Because I can delete any photo, I click with abandon, which is what brought me up against three maxed-out cards that needed clearing. The thought of losing even one good shot nagged me until I finally decided to make 4×6 copies to have and to hold… as is my habit.
After deleting two-thirds of each memory card while seated in front of a store kiosk, I walked out of Walgreens feeling as though I’d gone on a diet and lost 20 pounds, despite gaining 307 photos. But a low moment awaited: clearing the memory cards. Pushing that “Delete All” button was more traumatic than pushing the button to launch a nuclear attack. It meant forever! What if I’d missed printing even one good picture?
My kids have pressed me to give up hard copies entirely, and I promised I would… next time. Today I concluded that my unstoppable photo collecting can continue just a little longer. How can I ignore the cry of my basement albums? “You’ve loved us for so long! You can’t stop now!”
Has this become a bad habit? Well if it is, it’s completely harmless.
But are there any completely harmless bad habits?
My 307 pictures got me thinking. How many other bad habits do I have that haven’t been classified as such? What other negative behaviors far more serious than album-collecting ought to be stopped? Every bad habit has something tantalizing within it. We can’t lick it because we like it. It feeds us somehow, gratifies something, gives back in some way. If it didn’t, we could walk away.
Experts tell us the best way to get rid of an undesirable habit is to substitute a desirable one. But since there’s already something captivatingly desirable nestled within every bad habit, finding an even more desirable substitute can be problematic and is one of life’s greatest challenges.
If I could just figure out how to conquer my album-addiction, maybe I could triumph over other bad habits, say, my love affair with sugar. How could there ever be anything more desirable than sugar? For now, I’m just trying to think of something more appealing than stockpiling photos in the basement. After watching Louisa reorganize her computer pictures for several hours straight, keeping computer albums doesn’t seem all that desirable. Talk about time-intensive!
Dusting the cobwebs off my basement albums can be done in three minutes flat. If I’m eating candy, in two.
”For as he thinks within himself, so he is.” (Proverbs 23:7a)
I feel your “pain” having to delete a few hundred pictures from the memory card. It’s like throwing away a beautiful moment, a beautiful face. I always say, “What if we end up needing this one?” I keep reminding myself of these words….”All Things in Moderation”. What’s a Mother/Grandmother to do?
i still think printing a few is a good idea. a photo album lying on a coffee table is a good thing. just like sending a letter in the mail. not practicle, but still nice to open.
I fear I’m on the fast track to building a 200+ album collection of my own. As much as digital storage is convenient, it just can’t match the feeling of sitting down with a cherished photo album in hand. I say keep it up!
I’m on a good way with my photoalbums too.. I don’t how many I do own but it’s a few already. I LOVE Pics!!! And I just finished putting in last Michigan trip and that album started in MI in 2008, so a year in an album. Keep it up with your albums!! I can look thru some of them in summer if you want to have them looked in =).. Love pictures!!!
There is no substitute for looking at printed pictures of cherished loved ones. They bring back such memories! I have some photos on-line too, but we have a CD of pictures from a relative’s wedding, that I never even saw once (and the relative has since divorced and remarried!!). On-line pictures don’t even come close to printed pictures. Photos have always been on the top of my fictional “what I’d grab if my house was on fire” list! (Of course, you couldn’t “grab” 200 albums, I guess, but they still are precious!!) Go for it!!
Making photo albums is NOT a bad habit! Working with pictures always puts me in a good mood and reminds me of how much I have to be thankful for in life. And everyone likes looking through the books later. I think it’s a good habit and you shouldn’t give it up. Love you!
From the looks of the comments, you are in for a tough battle kicking this habit. Everyone is telling you it’s not so bad. Sounds like your talking to a bunch of addicts themselves. 🙂
If you go to a Best Buy, you can purchase a small external hard drive that you can save all of your pictures onto permanently and then pull them onto a computer or print them if you want to retrieve them.
That way you can move it safely to retrievable place then delete the pics on your camera to free up space.
But I agree with Nelson, though not practical, a hard copy of a photo is still the best thing.
Noooooooooooo! Don’t stop! I agree with those who say that looking at photos on a computer doesn’t compare w/sitting down w/an album. I guess I’m hopelessly locked in another time, but I vastly prefer the hard copies. Also, those photos are something healthy that you can hold onto. Just think of all the memories captured in those 200+ albums. You go, girl!
Jim is the album creator and keeper at our house. When I think of it, I have no idea what our children will want to do with all of those when we both are gone. I’m bad at keeping greeting cards that people have sent over the years. One day someone will enter our house and discover that the albums and other ‘stuff’ has taken over, and we are nowhere to be found.
Photo albums are still fun to put together and look through! Today’s craft stores are making it easier to save them in pocket albums which can hold up to 300. Have you seen the digital photo frames which can hold over a hundred photos? You can hook your camera to it and move them all to the frame and then just print small favorites for your purse. You can also keep extra photos on a stick drive that plugs in the side so you can use it as another photo album. That might the way to go to save room.
Pretty hilarious post, Margaret. Photo albums are to digital storage what a handwritten letter is to email, what a verbal conversation is to text. The latter may be faster but lack the personal touch and intimacy the former provide. So you just keep going for the Guinness record in the category of largest photo album collection in North America by a blond woman over 50.
Your assessment of the expert advice on how to get rid of a bad habit made me chuckle. In one sentence you dismantled the flaw of that logic. The one bad habit I don’t understand is smoking- if it’s anything like my try behind the garage of the neighbors down the street when I was a kid, there is a whole lot of negative coughing and choking you have to endure before it ever gets “good”, so it’s not instantly gratifying like say chocolate covered donuts, for which the learning to love curve is exponential.
Love the Chinese proverb- especially for the good habits.
Love,
Terry
What you have in 200 albums sure beats my 50 boxes of loose pictures that date back to 1980 or earlier! You could start a business…I will give you my boxes and YOU put them into albums 🙂
I have switched to memory cards, but I can’t bring myself to delete them. I like Luke’s idea of putting the pictures on an external hard drive (OK my kids would have to do it for me) and then if there is a fire all I have to do is grab that! Plus if I can’t find a certain picture because it is buried in a basement full of boxes, then I can just reprint one! Sounds like a plan 🙂
And besides,despite a messy basement full of boxes, this doesn’t even make it to my list of bad habits. Like being on the computer when I should be cleaning the basement…better run.
I like Barbara’s idea of grabbing the external hard drive in a fire!! Actually we did put all of our online pictures on an external hard drive that we can access from all of our computers/laptops. Another cool thing is my photo processor (Picasa) has a “People” feature that has some kind of facial recognition processing. If you identify someone in one picture, it will suggest other faces for you to confirm or reject as that person. Once you have it “trained” or cataloged, if you are looking for a picture with “Joe” in it, you can click on the “Joe” index and hopefully find it. Can’t do that with a print of a photo. (Maybe, I should get a scanner and just scan in all my boxes of photos — none of which are in albums, by the way!!)
I love all the albums. I print most of my pictures too Midge. I’m paranoid that my computer will crash and I’ll lose them all. I would die if that happened! I say keep it up too 🙂
Yes but Margaret at least you have albums–albeit alot of them–but I have all of our hundreds pictures in boxes. So I went digital–that is the way to go so my children said–well now there are thousands of pictures on my computer but none to share! (I do have them backed up however.) I guess it’s a toss up! Anyway I have always admired your having all those albums–not to mention the time and effort that went into them!!
Now as to bad habits………
There are worse things you could do and worse habits you could have. 🙂
There are worse things you could do and worse habits you could have. 🙂