My memory is kind of terrible.

It is somewhat fitting that the movie I have watched the most in my adulthood is Memento. Lenny’s life was shaped around the things of which he thought worthwhile to remind himself.

Years ago I established a rule for myself: No public negativity on social media.

I don’t always succeed, but posts that make it past the filter usually only live about 20 minutes before they are deleted.

An app I use daily is Timehop. It shows me what I’ve posted every year on today’s date. Yesterday I came across a post from eight years ago. I was very mad about…something. I was Vaguebooking ™ enough to where it took a bit of thinking to remember why I was mad.

I wasn’t better off remembering.

But, since the no negativity rule was established, I am daily reminded of the better moments and am freed from the personal hell of refreshing of the angers and frustrations that I’ve evidently forgotten about naturally. I’d rather not recall the trivial annoyances of life if I can help it.

The second part of this curation is digital legacy. I’m within the generation that is first to overdocument ourselves to where my week to week life could be easily referenced by my descendants. 

I am the patriarch of the digital side of my family, and if/when any of my kids or their kids want to look something up, I don’t want my posting history to cause me to be disregarded as the bitter, ranting guy they are glad they didn’t wind up knowing. (Not to say that there aren’t elements of life that really bother me, but if I daily took to the internet to build my digital heritage with such things, a different curated life would be created altogether.)

Maybe it’s a bit of hubris to hope that anyone will read this or remember me or learn about me from what I write after I pass. But, I’d rather become the person who hits a feedback loop of remembering and focusing on the things I’m grateful for as the years go by, and maybe that will help me to become the person who could brighten someone’s life somewhere down the line.

vcD,
-R