What methods do you use to help you remember your life?

There are a lot of ways to store memories—perhaps pictures are most often used. There are videos and diaries, and who knows what else? I use rocks as memory aids. I collect rocks from everywhere I go, and when I see them, I can remember what I was doing and where I was when I collected that rock.

I also have a toilet paper collection, found in European bathrooms circa 1972. The collection is nice to look at and to feel, and it is even annotated with where I was when I collected it, but I’m afraid that the only memory that comes back is of some murky stall in England, where the toilet paper was like waxed paper and every piece was stamped with, “property of her majesty’s government.” Delightfully ironic, no? But it could be apocryphal. Even though that is what inspired me to start collecting, I had not collected any English TP, having left the nation before I got the idea.

I digress, as per usual.

I want to know what you use to collect memories. But what I’m even more interested in is whether you ever go back to remind yourself of those memories. My family used to have slide shows (projected on a wall) when we were kids. Nowadays we can do slide shows on a computer. But how many of us actually look at those slides? How many watch the videos?

If you do watch, how do you decide what to review? How do you find it?

If you don’t watch, do you feel guilty? Is it something you plan to do some day? Why do you take all those photos if you’re never going to look at them?