It’s easier if you put the horse BEFORE the cart!

  

When I want to put a picture with a story I write, I look for it by going  back through my photo archives, guessing at about when I took the photo (because they are grouped by the date I downloaded them from whatever camera I used).  An inexact science at best. 

For example, I recently came across a picture of me as a little kid (yes, I know, there are alot of those!) in the kitchen of our old house in Springfield.  And I realized there was a connection between that picture and one I took about a year ago.  Soooo, I started looking for the more recent picture  so that I could do a post about their connection, but I couldn’t find it.

Part of the problem is that my photos aren’t in consistently-named files.  The Kodak camera I used first, lists them by numeric-only dates, i.e. 8-2-09.  While the Panasonic system that goes with my current camera lists them this way “Aug 2 2009”.  Also in the mix are old photos I have downloaded (which are filed alphabetically by how I have named them) that, depending on whether I’ve edited them or not, can be found in one or all of four systems — these two systems, plus the “My pictures” on my hard drive and my new Picasa 3 editing program. 

Can you see how comfusing it is for me, an already disorganized person, to locate a specific photo?

Ha!  But I think I’ve discovered a solution!  Late last night when I was looking for the “lost” photo in all those systems, out of frustration, I decided to just start from the beginning of one system and go through each file methodically (not something I always think to do — that methodical thing) until I found the picture I wanted.

But as I went through the files, I would come across another picture that I would think, “Oh, I should do a post about that!”  So, I pulled up my blog too, and started creating drafts for future posts that are just the picture(s) I’ve come across and a “working title” that will remind me what picture it is when I look at the title. 

I now realize I was going at the link between pictures and posts from the wrong end!  Rather than deciding to write a post and THEN looking for the picture that I have in mind for it, I am now going to go through my photos, put them in drafts, and use those drafts to write posts!

Of course, not all of my posts necessarily include photos and some of them are about a picture I took yesterday, but when they are going to include an older picture, this is going to be a much less stressful way to do it.

I just hope WordPress doesn’t have a limit on how many drafts you can store, because I think I may end up with alot of them!

May this be an encouragement to all of you.  If at 63 years old I can still have an occasional “ah ha” moment and come up with a new way to do something, then I hope that will encourage you to never say “I’m too old (or set in my ways) to change.”

May you have an “ah ha” moment of your own today!