The plight of the digital hoarder

Reading Charlie Warzel’s latest article in The Atlantic brought up one of those situations that I’ve had in the back of my mind. You know the one that sometimes rears up and says “halloo” and you’re like, “Yes, that’s something I should do something about, or consider more thoughtfully,” right before you’re distracted with taxes or cats or something much more important to the present moment.

My digital inventory is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I have so many files saved in so many places, it really is a roadmap to my 30+ years online. I have a couple of external hard drives and all of the computers I’ve owned since 2002, just waiting to be scavenged. I can’t tell you what I’ve got saved there, and that’s the problem.

I have my entire thesis, notes, PDFs, and versions saved on Google Drive. My dissertation is moving into the folder next door. I have a ton of audiobooks saved on a red Western Digital Passbook that doesn’t like to keep ahold of its cord. There’s an old laptop that may have some embarrassing chat logs saved on it (not embarrassing to me, but still). And a host of other cloud accounts that have pieces of me scattered through the Intarwebs.

This is the first step to having a functioning teleporter: the atomizing of a human life, one jpeg at a time.

My life runs on a semester schedule, so there may be some time available this summer (while dissertation writing) to make a start on curating and culling this unwieldy collection. I think it would be interesting to go through every file, every photo, every stray bit and byte that makes up a good chunk of who I’ve built myself to be. So many little corners of the internet hold the me-equivalent of that stray 2×4, a half-full can of primer, and some brass bracket from the 1950s. I may need that GIF one day.

Without children to burden with my digital legacy (my nephew would be the only one I’d trust, and I like him too much to make him go through my “SORT THIS SHIT” folders), I often wonder who am I saving all of this stuff for? Did that snippet of a poem from 2011 really mean something to me, or is it just one step on the path to becoming a mediocre writer? I have twenty photos of a stapler from my old writing center because I thought it would be funny to give it its own Facebook page. (It was funny, for a while, but then I forgot about it.)

If I really think about it, I’ve saved all of this, every last byte, for me and for right now. Perhaps, instead of waiting for circumstance to bring the borders of my life into clearer view, I should take this opportunity to “sort this shit” now and keep only what is a reflection of who I was, and who I aim to become. Perhaps, I will make a multimodal journal of my life so far.

I just thought of this now, writing this post (because writing is thinking, friends) and this could be a nice project for this blog.

What am I even doing anymore?

I haven’t had an idea for a post in a while. I’ve been writing, not necessarily the things I’m supposed to be writing, but writing nonetheless. I have a year’s worth of short bits in my journal that have given me a new outlook on my life.

I don’t change much, really.

I think that it’s hard to see a whole year unless you’ve chronicled it in some way, whether in a scrapbook a bullet journal, or even your photo albums on your phone. Without that easy avenue to look back, you’ll never leave the path you’ve been on for, well, your whole life.

By having a link that forces me to see what I wrote on this day last year, I can spend a moment lamenting over how the obstacles and complaints are still the same and that, whether by my own fear or others’ handiwork, I have not moved forward as much as I’d like. Alas, reflection is not always a positive experience, but it is always useful.

Diss-combobulated

I am supposed to be writing the revision of my dissertation proposal, but I am a bit lacking in the motivation department. I even set up an appointment with my diss chair to get me moving and, maybe when it is imminent (as in that day) I will finally get something workable on the page. I would like to not be like this. I don’t think it’s fair to me or my chair.

How much do you want to hear about this journey? I wonder if it would be helpful to future Ph.D.s to hear about my experience. I know I found a lot of advice online (for reasons) and wouldn’t have made it this far without it.

However, it’s not a path I would recommend to most. It is not necessarily healthy, mentally or physically, and the rigor of the work is largely performative. There are small movements, particularly in the humanities, of making the PhD process more a communal practice instead of an individual struggle. They are slow though and largely rooted in the departments outside STEM.

This is my sixth year in the PhD program. I am a bit jaded now, which is why I wonder if it’s time to go. Not leave the program, but leave the fellowship, find full-time work doing…something…and finish the dissertation on the side.

I love working with students. I love reading their writing. Teaching, though, is changing and I’m not sure I want to change with it. I’ll talk more about that later.

For now, I think I will try to post more often and talk about school, my interests, and various things. I am not interested in creating a personal brand, though I am not completely against creating merch. (But I’ll probably forget to.)

This ain’t Storage Wars

While that show and this article both represent a business plan that allows someone to take advantage of other people’s misfortune, at least when storage lockers are auctioned off, we can fool ourselves that the storage company is trying to recoup their losses.

Not sure how many suitcases are lost due to passenger error, but this many don’t seem to hurt the airlines (since they got payment in most cases for not delivering) and their insurance doled out the cash to the passenger. But the things we pack are more than just material belongings, there are sentimental and important objects that, for whatever reason, need to get from one place to another.

I feel like this company could be funneling a lot of this stuff for charitable causes and the article takes a pretty flippant view on people losing their belongings forever.

>>> U.S. airlines lose 2 million suitcases a year. Where do they all go?