We are all going to die. It’s true, none of us is getting out of this journey alive and that’s okay. Part of what makes life so beautiful is its finiteness. But what I do find sad is that when someone passes, they sometimes take all of their stories with them and future generations don’t get to share these wonderful tales.
I didn’t become a Mami until later in life and it’s quite possible that if my daughters decided to have children of their own, I may not be around to meet my grandchildren or tell my daughters what it was like for me to transition into motherhood. I write and I hope my daughters will one day read what I’ve written. I photograph and I’m on a mission to take more video (as soon as I remember to charge my camera), but I never get around to putting all of these memory mementos into a cohesive whole, they are scattered around in laptops, phones, albums, and drawers. And my thoughts.. well they are always scattered.
How do I organize these memory mementos so that my daughters can access them painlessly if they want to someday?
I’m not a scrapbooker (I didn’t even bother making my girls baby books), I hardly ever get pictures printed, and the videos I have taken are hidden on various hard drives.
With this lack of archival skills, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try LiveOn. LiveOn is sort of like a memories cryogenics service. They “deep-freeze” your memories and guarantee them forever. Even if they go out of business they have provided for an endowment to provide for archiving costs. It’s a great way to leave memory tokens for future generations that can be accessed easily by more than one person.
LiveOn lets you create “memories” made up of pictures, narration, videos, and text; “timelines” made up of “memories”; and you can also answer suggested “life question” prompts. You can share your creations with “tribe” members or via social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. The Standard Subscription, which is the one I tried, is always free. There are also Premium Subscriptions that you can pay for that offer more features.
I liked being able to quickly create a video of mixed elements with text and music that was easily shareable. I could see myself doing it again.
Oh and if you need a little help getting your non-digitized media to play nice in a digital world you can use this coupon code for 30% off on LiveOn Rewind: HOLIDAYREWIND. LiveOn Rewind will help you preserve and convert your memories digitally.
How do you preserve memories for posterity?
Thank you to LiveOn for sponsoring this blog post. Please visit LiveOn to learn more about sharing and preserving your most important memories. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective. Although story ideas were provided, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
That’s so nice. 🙂 I’ve been thinking about this too ….I became a Mum at 33 – and was lucky to have my mom who was only seventeenish years older than I. Vidur knows more about her life than I do – thanks to the gramma grandson bonding. I wish she had written it all or recorded it all, though. I am working on a a biography – and putting in all the events, stories i can remember. Not sure if I’ll ever get around to making it a cohesive book….but I hope I’ll have some fun reading material. I started a blog as a tribute to my Mom when she passed away last year in Feb…and “chat” with her there.
You are right, though, about getting it all together in one place. 🙂
Loved the video, Unknown Mami. I wish I’d had a video camera when Vidur was little. 🙂 Got photos and hundreds of albums though.
I wish more people recorded their stories. Thank goodness for photography. There is a need for services like this but I do good job of backups. Also, pen and paper journals are great ways to create a treasure for future generations.
Even with a service like this I would do backups (which reminds me I need to do some backups) I was thinking this is a good service if something unexpected happens and damages your backups or makes them inaccessible (fire, flood, earthquake). It also makes it easy to distribute pre-curated items.
I became a mother for the first time when I was young. Younger now that I am now 🙂 . . .I have 4 children ~ my oldest 19. I was two months from my 21st birthday when he was born. In one year, 10 months his time I was a mother. Unbelievable to me now! I thought I was so mature and I also thought I knew everything. How I miss those days. . .((When I knew everything.)) Now, I not only have a 19 year old, my youngest daughter is 5. . .I take picture and write about our lives and look back and think Geee, this blogging thing is just so cool How I wish I had always had this.
I am as disorganized as you say you are. I have pictures everywhere! I have videos somewhere. I have never scraped booked because of the lack of time or maybe it’s organization I never know which. It would be nice to have it all in one spot.
Thanks Mami. 🙂
Sounds like a great idea. I will have to check it out.
This post reminded me of a documentary I watched in high school about elephants. When the elder elephants die, they take all the knowledge and memories, if you will, wiht them. This makes the rest of the elephants sad, and they mourn. Just like us! I think anyway you keep track of memories is wonderful. There is this commercial for windows or microsoft where they dad is typing journals to his daughter, from the day she was born. I love it! I think by the time the kids now are adults, everything they read and write will be virtual. That’s a good way to do it!
What a wonderful idea in this digital world we now live in!!!