Notes on residual substance from the archives
Presently, my Documents folder (ex-Downloads, -Music, -Templates) contains 3,837 files across 171 sub-folders; its size is 4,596,169,837 bytes.
It's my life in ones and zeroes: current projects, life administration, resources, and—if I squint my eyes and tilt my head a bit—a vaguely defined archive holding photos, journal entries, and documents which record the sentimental moments of my life.
Current projects are simply what I'm actively working on; as a scholar, this means work for my next manuscript or conference proposal or that work-in-progress novel. Life administration contains inventories, like the list of tv shows or music I mean to get to. It's active material, but meant to give some semblance of structure in my life. Resources are reference material, useful for what I'm actively working on. (I have learned to avoid collecting resources "just in case" and to value a strong reference over several.)
It's the archive that frustrates and exhausts me. A lot of memories are contained in that vault: of what has happened and is long gone, of what I had hoped for and did not obtain, of what once brought joy but now leaves hollow melancholy. Pre-pandemic journal entries contained an unbridled enthusiasm and optimism for life that I do not recognize; was it really me who wrote those entries?
As I'm in a subtractive phase of my life, I have decided to approach the archives as a dilemma to solve. This is not merely the organization of files—it is the meaning-making of my life up until now. This archive contains emotional hazards, stuff to be handled with caution. It is also where aspects of my self, the patterns of thoughts and feelings and actions, reside. That is to say, there's useful stuff here too for the future.
The dilemma is in discerning what to keep and what to discard. Today, it occurred to me that I should keep what resonates with me and my future goals; some material like photos of summer camps and meals with friends conjure fond memories, their recollection inspires me to pursue those feelings of contribution and companionship. What should be discarded are the substances that cloud my judgement or that cause me emotional pain. Such artifacts represent unprocessed grief, longing, and obsessions that hinder more than help.
It's a simple criterion, but it's the obvious kind of practicality that I often overlook. Those screenshots of conversations with old flames and lost friends can be released, to make room for the present. Then there are the papers I worked on in college that, while amusing to look back on, are the thoughts of one who has since lived and learned lots. They, too, have little value these days.
That said, I will maintain a text file to record key dates and moments (both good and bad) so that I have a codified record of what matters to me. It's a bit of a tautology, but whatever I deem worthy of recording by default has significance to me. Plain text is much more manageable than word documents or photos or videos.
By the end of this exercise (however long this emotional parsing will take), I hope to have an archive that is conducive to living well.
How amusing. As I returned to parsing my files after publishing this post, I came across a picture of a textbook reading dated 2014-12-15. It addresses the concept of sunk cost (so this is from a business textbook):
[sunk cost] ... is really just another term for historical or past cost—it is a cost that has already been incurred, and therefore is irrelevant to the decision. At one time or another, we all try to soothe the wounded pride arising from having made a bad purchase decision by using an item instead of replacing it. But it is a serious mistake to think that a current or future action can influence the long-run impact of a past outlay. All past costs are down the drain. Nothing can change what has already happened.
Emphasis mine. In the context of my post, a sunk cost is equated to keeping artifacts from the past. What's done is done. What matters for the calculation are future benefits and costs.