I wish… I still printed my photos and put them in albums (part 2).

What good is a memory card if you can't remember what's on it?

About this time last year I was moving boxes, stacking boxes and unpacking boxes. Fortunately I wasn't living in one. I had moved back to my hometown and was squeezing years and years worth of accumulated belongings into a small bedroom and a cluttered garage. Needs must.

Whilst unpacking, I came across several cameras and camera cases and boxes of camera-related wires and discs. I put them all in a plastic storage box under my desk because I wanted to keep them safe and I wanted to know where they were. I'd sort them out later.

On Friday I finally pulled that box out from under my desk, opened it, and began searching for digital memory cards. I thought maybe I'd find half a dozen. Perhaps a couple more.

I found 13 memory cards!

I couldn't believe how many there were. Had I bought that many? Did they still work? What on earth was on them? 

I felt a curious flutter of excitement. The sort of anticipation I used to feel when picking up photos from the developers.

One at a time I inserted the memory cards into whichever camera accepted them and then looked at the first and last few photos on each card. Some photos were tagged with a date, some weren't. For those that weren't, I estimated a date based on the events recorded in the photos. 

I caught glimpses of a road trip to Edinburgh (I nearly moved there), a Caribbean holiday (bliss), a fancy dress pub crawl in Brighton (I got thrown out of a bar - long story), day trips with my ex-girlfriend, teacher training in London (I was a 'mature' student - yeah right!), a holiday in Norway, a stag do in Belgium (cold, so cold), and my first craft fair.

In this way I was able to put the cards in chronological order.

2005 to 2014. Ten years! A decade of my life recorded on 13 little rectangles made of metal and plastic.

My next step is to download the photos (Is it downloading or uploading? Do I care?) onto my external hard drive and then file them in folders by date and event.

That sounds suspiciously like hard work.

Do you wish you did more with your photos? Why not dig out a favourite snap from your past and share it with me.