Unclutter!

A odd mood struck me recently.

I am a bit of a shutterbug, and while I dearly love my SLR, for sheer convenience and ease of use, you can't beat the ol' celly. After a walk along the shores of the Gulf that featured a number of extraordinary things to see, I was reviewing the pics and it occurred to me that I should clean out some of the riff-raff that was occupying too many GB's of memory on my iPhone. As I thumbed my way through the literally thousands of shots, I was engaged in an internal conversation,

"Aww Steve, why are ya keepin' that one?"
"Good Gosh man, how many stupid biking shots does one old fart actually need?"
"Oh look, who would have guessed? Another sunset?"

I'm sure you can guess what happened next, but in case it comes as a surprise, this hyper-focussed, Type A brained old fart spent 4 days going through the pics on both my iPhone and Mac, exporting keepers to an external hard drive after filling in some missing metadata, and feeling quite the accomplished photo-nerd as I freed up dozens of GB's on both devices. 

My darling wife accuses me of being anally-retentive, and while she's very likely correct, I chalk it up to preferring my life to be organized. That's not the same thing as being sphincter-ized, at least in my books, because I truthfully don't mind a little clutter, just so long as it is neatly organized according to a logical format. 

I feel strongly that way about my devices, and only slightly less about my living space.

I like storage to make sense, to be easily navigated, to be free from wasted use/space, and abhor duplication, so sacrificing the time I might have been sitting on the couch surfing the endless stream of channels they offer on cable down in FLA, or scrolling through the social media platforms I lean toward, the toil seemed like a prudent and responsible choice.

Okay, she's right ... that is a bit retentive.

I don't mind admitting that scrolling through those same devices makes me grin stupidly since the previously random, frustrating mess now exudes the tidiness of an organized mind. I can find pics Uber-quickly now, re-discovered and fav'd some gems I forgot about, and completed the date/occasion info should my faculties decline over the upcoming years.

I am just a wee bit ashamed to admit that this multi-day process was so cathartic that I'm pondering doing the same thing with my 4 TB external drive back home in the beach that contains evidence of an Uber busy career ...

There's all of our family stuff thanks to two athletic, passionate children.

There's pics and vids from family trips and events.
There's all the stuff gathered and collected during the years at BCC plus YBK stuff.

There's thousands of pics and vids of all of the teams that I coached.
There's a similar version of my short career at BNC.
There's also stuff from coaching club teams, provincial sides, and national events. 

As I recall, there's only 300 or so GB's free so the sifting and sorting will be a BIG undertaking. I'm going to have to budget a little more time to deal with that goal, eh?

Oh well, I guess that's all part of the fun!