Now that my paper files are sorted and my email inbox is under control, I’ve set my sights on archiving and organizing my digital photos.  This is proving to be a bigger challenge than I’d anticipated.  My computer doesn’t really recognize my phone as a device, and yesterday, after discovering Google Photo and getting most of my photos to sync there, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get them from Google Photo to my hard drive.  It is times like these where I really regret not taking any computer classes, or properly learning how to code, or how to navigate any software (like, for instance, Photoshop) for that matter.  I was on the phone with my dad the other day and I told him the only piece of advice he offered that I truly regret not heeding was to take photography as an elective in high school.

Anyway, there are thousands of photos living somewhere between my phone and my Google Photos, and thousands more living….on a cloud, somewhere?  Or dropped in a box in some unknown corner of the internet?  I can’t really say.  In a perfect world, I’d summon them all with a single key stroke and, boom, they’d be neatly categorized in an easy-to-find folder on my desktop.  I’m not sure that program has been written yet, so for now I’m back to google searching how to get my pictures on my computer, please and thank you.

I have big aspirations of being able to enhance some of what I write here with images, the way some great books contain carefully selected illustrations or – my favorite – wood block prints.  Also, my family has been encouraging me for the longest time to share more of the things I make, which was the original inspiration behind revamping this space at the beginning of this year.

Oh, this year.  Not really anything has gone according to plan, my tiny venture as a virtual shopkeep chief among the projects of mine that have been challenged by unforeseen circumstances.  And, of course, school being closed has complicated, well, everything.  As this month draws to a close, leaving fewer than forty days between now and the mid-point of ,the solar calendar, I find myself thinking long and hard about the backend of 2020 and what I’d like to accomplish.

Some of these are lofty goals, some of them are basic, and some of them just need to happen – like getting a handle on my photos.  That seemed like one of the easiest items to tackle, and yet here I am, two days in and nary an image file to conjure.

I did, however, come upon some quilt binding which means there’s a good chance our family movie night is about to get a little cozier.