Virtual yaadein

The skilled procrastinator that I am, I surpassed several deadlines I had given myself to clean out my official laptop. Finally as I ran out of space, I compelled myself to get around to it on Sunday night.

Being at work for about 8 hours a day and spending some time surfing while away from work, I had reason to believe that if someone asked me where I live, and if I said online, it wouldn't be a completely outrageous answer. Perhaps I'd get a chuckle, perhaps a confused look but certainly not a you-are-crazy expression. I have been just as much a part of online world as I am of my offline world and frankly quite torn between the two.

Over the span of 2 years of semi-owning my laptop, it had become my virtual residence and just like my real one, my stuff was scattered all around. No surprises that cleaning it up almost felt like moving homes - grouping like things together, zipping them up and transfering. The stuff I stumbled upon ranged from an interesting article I had once come across, link to a painting that had once inspired me, a snapshot of a website that sold fashion stuff cheap and several other trivial things. And pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. I tend to carry my camera along almost everywhere hoping to catch something intriguing when I'd least expect it. And the invention of digital cameras has liberated us from the fear of think-before-you-click syndrome. There is nothing to waste anymore, only beauty to freeze.

As I came across folder after folder, with names that made no sense, I was overcome with mixed feelings. Some made me nostalgic, some made me blush and some others were just whatever. An hour later, I was done playing my own search agent and the pile with 'whatever' pics was significantly heavier than the others. I had accumulated so many memories that I wasn't even sure I needed. But having discovered them, I didn't have the nerve to hit the delete button. After much convincing that went around from me to me, I finally was able to get rid of the blurred ones that I'd saved thinking I'd make them arty one day with photoshop and making pretty wall pieces out of it.

Ray Romano once said something beautiful… that one needs to keep editing one’s life to discard the bad memories and to retain only the good ones. But it isn't as simple as good or bad anymore. What do you do with all the other piles that you don't care about today but unsure of whether they’ll evoke any interest in you someday.

O well, at least I'll have those memories in my head. That's the thing about human brain, it doesn't reach maximum capacity every 2 years forcing you to dump stuff to an external hard drive.