I have a very manual photo backup process. It involves:
- Carefully going through different devices and merging their photo streams into a folder,
- Running some scripts to organise these neatly by
year/month/date, and rsyncing this to different places.
The trouble with a system like this is that if you go through something traumatic, it’s really hard to sift through the memories of the period and complete the backup. So I sort of just stopped doing it in late 2019 — when I was told my marriage was ending. For over three years now, I’ve been operating mostly backup free. Memories of the kids, little moments around my life, … all just a busted phone away from being lost.
I decided to change that today. I blared a lot of music from my youth, made a whole pot of tea and spent the evening powering through the system. I now have a complete (redundant) backup of all my photos until today.
This is a relief.
But more than that, it feels like an expression of healing, as I didn’t feel anything negative. Just happy nostalgia for when the kids were younger.
