Technology is here to benefit us.\u00a0 At least it\u2019s supposed to and we can do our best to not let it take over.\u00a0 This can be challenging \u2013 as I\u2019ve talked about many times before.\u00a0 Recently it occurred to me that taking pictures with our phones, tablets, and digital cameras is a good example of technology here to support us.\u00a0 It\u2019s also an illustration of how when we\u2019re not careful, we forget to only use it to our advantage.\u00a0 It\u2019s important for us to use this wonderful technology of digital pictures to supplement our memories.<\/p>\n
Pictures can be one of those things we all have a lot of \u2013 and often it\u2019s not as organized as we\u2019d like. \u00a0As you\u2019ve probably heard me say before, one of the factors of getting organized is the quantity you have to deal with \u2013 and with digital pictures that quantity can quickly become overwhelming.\u00a0 And then when you consider you probably have both physical and digital pictures to organize \u2013 it can be paralyzing to consider organizing them \u2013 and the organization aspects are topics for other blogs.<\/p>\n
This technology of being able to take pictures digitally has many benefits for us.\u00a0 There is no cost for taking the pictures \u2013 we don\u2019t need film, let alone rolls and rolls of it on hand, just in case.\u00a0 We don\u2019t actually have to spend money getting our pictures developed, although we might choose to have some printed up and those will be ones we know are good and worth the time, money, and effort of getting the physical copies.\u00a0 We have the immediate visual feedback about whether an image was captured \u2013 did someone blink at the exact wrong moment \u2013 and give us the chance to try again (and again and again).\u00a0 Then there\u2019s the possibility of catching each and every adorable expression of your grand-kids.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, this same technology also makes it easy to take the pictures and avoid doing else with them.\u00a0 It might even be a case that you might not really even look at them after taking them \u2013 the excitement of picking the developed film up to discover what was captured doesn\u2019t apply with digital photographs.\u00a0 And then the options for organizing them can be quite a bit more overwhelming and procrastination becomes easier \u2013 they\u2019re saved and you can always do it later.\u00a0 Just because these digital pictures don\u2019t take up our physical spaces doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re not consuming space and that space carry its own risks also beyond fire and water.<\/p>\n
The most important thing is that there\u2019s a difference between living the experiences and capturing it all to relive later.\u00a0 When you have the camera (or photo capturing device) out taking pictures, you are only partially attending to what\u2019s going on around you and missing the experience of being fully present.\u00a0 Your memories are more likely to be of taking the pictures, not of the event itself.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t to say that taking pictures should be eliminated \u2013 rather that when we\u2019re not careful it\u2019s easy to get caught up in trying to capture the experience rather than relishing each experience and getting some pictures to highlight that.<\/p>\n
As a client and I recently talked about, would you rather watch the beautiful sunset and savor it or try to capture the beauty of the sunset in a picture to remind yourself in the future?\u00a0 This is definitely something I struggle with \u2013 oscillating between the extremes of regretting what I didn\u2019t capture since I didn\u2019t even pull out the camera to the other end of realizing that I\u2019ve taken 350 pictures in the last 2 hours.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s be honest \u2013 who wants to look at 500 pictures of your daughter\u2019s birthday party or your vacation to the Everglades?\u00a0 Will you<\/em> even want to look at that many pictures in a year, 5 years, or 25 years?\u00a0 And I\u2019m a bit tongue in cheek since I\u2019m probably one of those who would enjoy looking through that many pictures.\u00a0 Yet, even though I do like looking through tons of pictures, I can also share that I avoid looking at pictures \u2013 physical as well as digital \u2013 since it will take time to look at them all.\u00a0 This means that they\u2019re not being appreciated and cannot remind you of your lovely experiences \u2013 it has ceased to benefit you.\u00a0 Imagine what it would be like to have a manageable number of pictures that do their simple purpose of reminding you of this and that experience \u2013 is it difficult to picture that?<\/p>\n There\u2019s a balance between being fully present in the moment and capturing some images for the joy of reminiscing in the future \u2013 and what that balance looks like for you is not likely to match what it looks like for me.\u00a0 What matters is becoming aware of our tendencies \u2013 do you want to savor the moments more as they happen?\u00a0 Taking pictures is technology \u2013 whether we\u2019ve thought about it in that way or not \u2013 and just like in all other arenas, the goal and purpose is to support you and your values.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be lulled by the possibilities \u2013 make technology work for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Technology offers us so many benefits that we might not consider the costs equally \u2013 and when it comes to our pictures, the memories we want to save \u2013 it\u2019s easy to get caught up in that technology rather than making sure it supports our life and us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10,8,18,13,19,7],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-gratitude","tag-hoarding","tag-procrastination"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-pg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1569,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}