Looking Back At The Years
While simply scrolling through my Google Photos recently, I found a highlight it had created of pictures I'd taken a few years back.
A lot of my workdays go purely in work-related thoughts and activities (fortunate for my employers), and my weekends have been trying to build better habits and finding things I like to do. In settling into these routines, I now realize I have yet to give myself a lot of time to reflect on times of the past. Curious about what I could have been doing around this time a year back, I scrolled down my Photos. While a lot of memories and photos are of people, I also realized, outside of people, I had zero pictures of cool things I'd done, probably because I hadn't last year. I now have a new resolution to get at least one excellent picture a month of something I've done, to look back at across time. (Instead, here's another thumbs up from May 2022, for readers of my last post).
I did make the effort of scrolling a little further back and found that my previous few May's had a lot cooler photos. Trips to Kerala, a lot of outings with friends and family, and the odd sunset picture.
While wishing a friend for their birthday recently, I also became aware of the fact, that these past memories were wonderful times with this friend (and many others), that I sadly do not meet as often anymore. As a child who moved a lot between various cities and countries, when I joined college, I somewhere made the wrong assumption that the friends I'd make in this chapter of my life would be the ones that would stick around in my life regularly, and for a long time. While I still am close to certain friends from this time, a lot of the people I became friends with, who I haven't been able to keep up with, I now use the excuse of sharing these old photos with to catch up.
I think it's nice to look back at moments, things that made us laugh, cry or something that just looked pretty. We surely take photos with the intention of looking back at them one day, and I think it's nice to look back at things and see where we come from. We're fortunate to be able to document our memories so easily, and it is a little sad if we don't remember to go back and cherish them. If you do have a picture of or with me, from any May, do use this as an opportunity to catch up with me, but also do look back at your previous May's and see what you were up to and how far you've come!