I Learned A Valuable Lesson About Life & My Photos

(this blog was originally posted January 31 2017)

We live in a digital age; everyone has a phone on their hip or in their purse, that has a camera. So we take photos of everything that happens in our life; family photos, vacation photos, pet photos, photos of our things, and even photos of our food.

I’m no different, so couple that with my love for old family photos, and now you are talking about a bunch of photos. In recent years I’ve also collected all my parent’s photographs and spent hours scanning them. I’ve spent many evenings watching TV with my Flip-Pal® on the coffee table and a box of photos at my feet.

Then, of course, there is the sorting and organizing of them all. Last year I bought the program called Historian to help with that (It’s an updated version of an old program I had). With Historian, you can tag photos, create albums and categories, and make corrections. As I said, I’ve been working on this photo project for several years. My ultimate goal was, “I will get them all organized, and then I’m going to upload them to the cloud so that I can share them with my family, and they will be safe.”

I bought Historian from a company called; FOREVER. I’d seem FOREVER at Roots Tech in 2016 and had, in fact, gone to a luncheon where the company founder, Glen Meakem, had spoken. Glen’s vision for photo storage appealed to me, so last year, I join the company as an Ambassador. I felt it was a nice compliment to my business at Shop the Hound.

So what’s so unique about their photo storage? First of all, I have to tell you that their guarantee is like no other. My photos will be stored for my lifetime plus 100 years. I know what your thinking; how can they do that? They back up their guarantee with the FOREVER™ Guarantee Fund, the world’s largest permanent investment fund dedicated to content preservation. When I heard that I was sold.

But that’s not the only advantage, there are other; and here’s just a few;

• Your files are your files. Often we don’t realize that when we store things in cloud storage in some cases, we’ve also given that website the right to the items we are storing there. I’m not saying it happens all the time, but you need to understand that and read the terms and conditions before you sign up. I know that can be asking a lot when you see a huge terms and conditions page.
• Your files are stored in their original full resolution. That’s important because you want the best resolution possible when you go to use those photos. Some people store their photos on Facebook. But did you know that they only save them at 72 dpi. Why would they store them any higher; after all, they are a social media site.
• Your files are triple backed up. That means that FOREVER doesn’t just store your photos in one place; they have multiple locations for backup so that if there was a disaster in one location, your files are still protected in two other places. Also, as technology changes and newer formats evolve FOREVER will move your files to that newer technology.
• You can share your files with your family, and you set up the level of access they have, including setting up a beneficiary of your photos. You can organize your photos with tags and put them into albums. You can even make corrections to your photos.

So you’re probably wondering. Where’s the lesson she’s learned? Well, it’s not so much about the program as much as it’s about life.

This past week my cousin’s husband died suddenly; in fact, he died in his sleep. There was no warning; it just happened. But it made me realize that we can’t wait for something to be perfect before we do something else. Whatever that something is. In my case, I was working on my photos when I had that “ah-ha moment.” So over the weekend, I took every photo I’d collected on my computer and uploaded them to my Historian storage account, and I also set up my designated beneficiary. I was not waiting for them to be perfect.

So the lesson that I learned from my cousin’s terrible tragedy is that you do have to treat your day-to-day life as if it could be your last. Not in a depressing way, but to remember to tell people you love them and not put off something you’d like to do until the timing is perfect. You may never get to perfect.

** If you’d like to find out more about FOREVER Storage or FOREVER Historian you can check out my page or email me at [email protected]  and we can talk.