Thanks to technology, I solved my own personal digital photo problem
No one had any good ideas for organizing all our (royal “our”) digital photos, AND I DON’T BLAME A SINGLE ONE OF YOU, because obviously weee (royal “weee”) needed a trailblazer (meee) to figure this out and share the good (ehh the… totally acceptable) news!
I mean actually my friend and coworker Tyler figured this out first and I texted him one night being like “Hey what’s that photo app you use” but y’know. DE NADA.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been slo-o-owly downloading all my photos from Dropbox and Flickr (THOUSANDS OF PHOTOS) and moving them into the native Photos app on my Mac. So far I like it, thank God, because it’s pretty much irreversible!! A couple details for those whomst are interested:
Storage??
I pay $2.22 (OK ghost of Steve Jobs) a month for 200 GB of iCloud storage, which so far is more than enough. Is it fine? I hope. Is it convenient? It syncs across all my many devices, which I like. Is internet space finite? Surely someone knows but let’s… not ask them.
Metadata??
Pretty much my only request for a photo-storage solution was that it include some kind of metadata, ideally run by an invisible robot with 1000 arms, since there are so many photos to go through. I like Photos because when I close the app, it chugs through background tasks like recognizing and tagging faces. It reads location metadata and turns it into maps. I can add keywords to identify photos that contain one of our cats or the other cat or perhaps both cats. Every so often, I open the “People” tab and confirm that, yes, that photo of Larry is a photo of Larry, and the invisible robot is like “*whirring* I am grateful, human. Based on your valuable input, I have now further identified 13 photos of *indeterminable shift in voice* Larry E. Gates II.” Your tolerance may vary. I need this for my huge photo library to stay even remotely organized.
Mugs?? Calendars?? Throw blankets with my face on them??
I know you can also order prints and products etc. from within this app, but I haven’t done it yet. I DEFINITELY will.
Speaking of spending money,
I can’t wait to read this Atlantic article about going deep in Goop
I asked the two women working in the store—pretty blond 20-somethings who could have been cousins, or sorority sisters, or cousins in the same sorority—if they could show me the things people liked the most. The pair pointed to vitamins and an artfully mismatched selection of vintage crystal goblets. Gleefully, I started grabbing things: a skin-care starter kit, a water bottle that contained a chunk of rose quartz, a pair of Millennial-pink cut-glass goblets. I selected a mint-green blow-dryer that has been advertised to seemingly every woman with an internet connection and a credit card. One of the saleswomen sold me on a giant ceramic bowl with the assurance that it would be great for nights when I just want a big salad. Nothing about the bowl seemed different from what you could buy at Crate & Barrel, but her enthusiasm for it seemed profound, and I didn’t want to disappoint her by distrusting the bowl’s potential.
And speaking of spending money again,
Did you know I have this bonkers style board??
This is a screenshot of about 1/8 of a Miro board I’ve tended since 2017 called Style definition, a result of owning the book The Curated Closet* (which I think Courtney borrowed last year and still has? COURTNEY?? CONFIRM/DENY? MY PERSONAL STYLE HANGS IN THE BALANCE?? I’M NOT MAD I’M JUST CURIOUS??), which is meant to help us all define our personal styles and, well, curate our closets based on that. What this means to me is potentially two precious seconds of hesitation before buying every cute flashy thing I see on eBay post-11pm when I’m doing the Endless Scroll in bed.
In case you’re interested in replicating the board above, I created it by at least loosely following instructions in the book to, for a couple weeks, just save any photo that appealed to me in which a person is wearing clothes. I did not have to understand why it appealed to me, just that it did. After this gathering period, I sat with my laptop on a Saturday (waaah why is it Monday again) and dumped all the photos onto a Miro board and … grouped them by themes, which emerged shockingly naturally: wow I guess I love collarless shirtdresses with Keds, and leather jackets with drapey shirts and dark skinny-leg cuffed pants, and coral colors and flutter sleeves and racerback crop tops with high-waisted midi skirts!!!
I open this board sometimes just to stare at it and feel rejuvenating feelings, and yesterday I did a deep dive with the mindset of FALL 2019, BABIES, and bought a couple things that strictly follow “my” “style” (namely this midi skirt to wear with crops and sweaters and, yes, the Madewell leather jacket I bought new on eBay in the dead of summer with tags still attached at 50% off store price babyyyy). And at the same time, I listed a few things for sale on Poshmark because it’s time to part with them, y’know?
Feels good feels great! Wow, can you believe I’m a style blogger now? Life moves fast!
*I try not to link to Amazon too much on here but for this book, who are we kidding, if you’re gonna buy this book you’re gonna Impulse Buy it from Bezos
I have to get ready for work starting ten minutes ago but real quick
If you care about essays, you might care about this essay about essays by Chicago-stalwart Megan Stielstra as much as I did:
Right now, in this life with its speed and its media, with my jobs and my kid, with every fucking day a challenge and a profound, crazy joy, writing is the only thing that slows me down. The only space I have to sit, quietly, and shhhhhh. What do I think about this? How do I feel?
August is almost over and my coffee’s cold and this day is gonna be great for me and for you, I can feel it. You can do whatever thing you want to do today!!! You know the thing! I believe in you!!!
I love you,
Lindsey