Blog - November 17, 2022

Day 17 : The November Happiness Challenge 2022

Documenting Experiences

I am typing this post for the second time, because my daughter decided to disturb me while I was almost through with the post and by the time I got back to it, the entire post had gone off without the option of rerieval. This is one of such moments where I feel like sending her to one of you. Toddlers are annoying! She is currently loosening my hair as we speak, unprovoked. If I tell her to stop, it is going to be war. Back to the topic at hand, I’ll try my best to recollect the post from memory, and I hope I do a great job because It is never easy to write the same things twice. Yesterday, someone asked on Twitter if anyone was genuinely happy at that moment and I responded in the affirmative.They further asked what I was doing to attain the happiness, to which I responded that I was going through pictures on my phone from 2019. The year 2019 was when I became a mum, the year I birthed this cute girl who I mentioned in the first paragraph. She can be a handful like she has been today but I wouldn’t trade being her mother for anything in the world. What an experience Motherhood can be. So, I was going through the memories from that year and smiling. It was indeed my source of happiness at that time and I was revelling in it, you already know that I focus on the seemingly little things to make myself happy and it’s all part of the intentional living that I imbibe. My partner and I ensured that we took lots of pictures and videos of our daughter right from birth and it isn’t even for posting on the internet because we rarely ever do that. Our intention is to capture as many moments as we can and I was especially invested in this.  We did it constantly and we were even able to capture her first ever walking steps. We took it a step further by sending these memories to an email address that we created in her name and which shed’d be able to access when she is grown. Imagine the happiness she’d experience when  she is able to go through them with the cute captions that we always make sure to accompany the memories with when we send them. I am that person who flips out her phone while hanging out with Family and friends to take pictures and videos. Again, these aren’t even for posting on Social media as I am not one to post real time content, but to save moments and view them later. It is a habit that works for me as I am able to view pictures of friends who I haven’t seen in the past years but the memories still make me connected to them. Beautiful memories are meant to be captured, and I try my best to do just that. Chats are preferrable for me to calls. This is because I am able to gather my thoughts and present them better via texts, and I also like to be able to refer to past conversations in case any confusion comes up later. I like to reference. This supports the legal perspective that every important decision must be put into writing as word of mouth only might not suffice. For me, it isn’t only the important decisions, it is literally everything. Writing also helps me to  manage my emotions better and to avoid triggering situations. For instance, these days, I would rather open my notepad and type rapidly than respond aggressively to someone who has said or done something I don’t like, It is a strategy I have developed to cope with unpleasant situations and it definitely works for me. I like to document situations in writing, pictures, videos and any other way I can, because these memories are all we get to cling to sometimes. Particular songs, or outfits , or even weather situations could serve as reminders to us about particular times in our lives, and trust me to be very deliberate about recording the very positive moments so that they serve as a pick me up for me in the future. It helps, it does help. Sometimes, I ask myself how life was before pictures. Might have been boring but I’m sure there were ways to document even at that time. Documenting experinces can be really soothing, especially when we are able to refer to them later and they make us grin with happiness. What is your way of documenting experiences? Do you regularly take pictures of places and monents? Is writing your preferred method or all of the above? Do you have other ways? Do let me know. I’ll be back. OBA