Reliving my past lives

So now that the majority of boxes have been unpacked, I'm left with the little tasks. Going through Christmas decorations to decide if I really want to keep (and therefore store) that ceramic snowman. Color coordinating my closet. You get the idea. Last night was the finally put away photographs that have lived in a box for 6 years in an album. There is something truly cathardic about reliving your past. I've been so blessed to have been so many places, and to live so many places. I filled one album with photos from a beer trip to Prague and Budapest, Thanksgiving in San Diego, my life in Oregon, South of the Border and Charleston. In reliving those lives, which seem somehow so distant and so like yesterday at the same time, I always realize how much I'm enjoying my life right now. I have a tendency to hover in the past. And even as I write this, I receive a phone call from my past, which makes it even harder to focus on the now. But the now is so fleeting, and pretty soon my albums will be filled with photos from my now. And I'm learning to grasp the present, and how very great it actually is.