I TAKE TOO MANY PHOTOS (and yet not enough)

I swear, every time I look through my phone’s IMAGE FILES I am greeted by the unstoppable and dire realisation that no, I will never be a true neat minimalist legend. I will simply be a woman with things. And the things I have the most of, clearly, will be all those alluring files I keep on my precious phone. 

Blossom in New York, 8th April 2024.

The best thing, without a doubt, is that they’re backed up. Because they’re not stored in one easily destructible phone, but on Google’s big, meaty servers too, everything was basically okay when I abandoned my poor phone at Heathrow last October. Am I still hurt by how lacklustre the lost & found department at the airport was? Yes. Am I still haunted by the knowledge that at any time it can all go south, and I can be on a 12 hour flight without my phone, saying, “wow I wish I had my phone”, and then be in Tokyo for maybe a week and a half completely phone-less, gazing at commuters eyes fixed on their phones like an orphan at an out-of-reach bowl of gruel? Yes. But basically, it was fine. Still got all my pics. Still got most of my apps (although tragically I lost the now-unavailable free version of Kanji Tree, but the person who made it deserves cash money, and I have other kanji apps).

I went to a safari park with my family, and I saw ponies there (yesssss).

The point is, my pics and snaps are eternal. They will never die. They will exist as long as I have storage left. And I do. I do have storage left.

They accumulate though. Like a big mould. Sometimes I look back upon them, and find seven near-identical photos of me standing in front of a landmark. None of them are “show to another human being” level images. And yet they are here, in the bowels of the phone. Lurking.

I love them. 

Eclipse in New York, 8th April 2024.

Here are some pictures from my recent outings. Try to guess what events may have lead me to take them. Try to imagine the rich life I may be leading. And then smile as you look. These are my images. This is me.

Abandoned Squirtle, 9th May.

Tasty treat, 21st June.

Hand reaching out, 30th May.

Lost Mickey, Tokyo, 3rd Jan.