Changed the "Screen Saver" on My Laptop, and Now Have 20 Years of Memories, Cascading Across Two Screens That Simply Make Me Nostalgic, Emotional, and Contemplative

I remember thinking around the time that video cameras became available to most Western society individuals, "But what will this do for childhood? Adolescents? Early Adulthood?" There's something Psychological about memory, ego, and identity building that I assumed would shift in the late 90s to early 2000s. What was that? The ability to record. To have visual memory of everything.

For my generation, taking photographs, waiting a week to get them from CVS or Rite Aid or Fay's Drugs (does Fay's Drugs even exist any more) was part of the process. In my case, perhaps only 4 to 6 pictures taken actually turned out okay. The rest were blurry. But, suddenly I had a moment of time taken beyond a Yearbook to remember who I was, who we were, and what we thought we knew about ourselves. I realize, in terms of egotistical nostalgia, this isn't quite as sufficient as what new generations have. 

For most kids (humans) born in the 2000s and beyond a chronology of video footage and weekly memorabilia exists as a chronicle of their every move - technology has made it so. I know, even as a teacher, that from 2001 on, I was able to document everyday maneuvers with a camera in my room and this was well before IPhones of the later 2000s. My point...

...some only know life as its been documented for them. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing...to have physical footage of the everyday. I imagine it must be eerie, as I only have boxes of still photographs to look at, and must go to my parents to find evidence of childhood and adolescence. Today, I imagine kids have video footage of who they once were for every year they've been alive. 

That's creepy. Like looking at ghosts of their old selves. The awkwardness. The cringes. I know photographs freak me out. I can't imagine having footage of Crandall in action as a 4-year old (or even to be able to see my 18-year old self existing). I remember feeling this same way when the Class of 1991, a year after I graduated, opened a time capsule and shared a video of their last day of school - senior day. My class didn't have that, but I knew all those faces and kids, butt hey were experiencing what we did the year before. Same location. Same scenes. And all of them trapped at the same space and time as how I remembered them. This was 25 years later. It gave me the heebie jeebies.

I began thinking about this last night simply because Apple upgraded its desktop, it can pull from my IPhoto libraries and put together still frames of my life that cascade whenever my computer sits idle (lucky for me, that is rare). I am hyper-nostalgic and I love paraphernalia of the past. I've loved that every moment I stop typing the images from 20+ years of life come across the screen, but it also freaks me out...

...triggers emotions and memories...

So I wonder, "What is it like for a generation who has watched over and over and over again, live footage of their past...their milestones...their moments...simply because that is how we've documented time?"

What does that do to a psyche?  An ego? and the heaviness that comes from nostalgia? Does it mess with the truer meaning to life and who we actually think we are? 

Just rambling. Because I can. And I do.