12,000

According to Picasso, which is a photo editor I use sometimes, I have 12,081 pictures on my computer's hard drive.

Is there such a thing as too many pictures?

Some of these go way back, as I have been using a digital camera since 2001. However, many of those photos are long gone. I have dragged a few along with me from computer to computer but not many.

Most of these photos have been taken since 2005 or thereabouts. While many of them are related to my former work as a newspaper reporter and photographer, others are family. Christmases past, for example.

None have been printed out and pasted in a scrapbook somewhere. They exist in the ephemeral place that is my hard drive.

Some of these pictures have been viewed by the 100 or so of you who read this blog on a daily basis, but close family has never seen them. And most likely, they never will, unless I do some serious scrapbooking.

I worry that an entire decade of our life - maybe the rest of it, since everything is digital - will be eradicated come the future. I mean, who is going to sit down and go through my hard drive when I die? Nobody. All of that work - everything I do - will be pitched out. It will vanish with a few letters: FORMAT DRIVE C.

Life is fleeting, and how many of us actually make an impact on this old world? The work we do on computers is evidence enough of how little it matters. How can it have any importance when with a touch of a few keys, years and years of toil and labor simply vanishes?

In the meantime, I am open to suggestions on how to manage all of these photos. What I am doing doesn't seem to be working very well.