Digital Trash
The Five Remembrances + Virtual Meaninglessness
Hi friends,
Upgraded cloud storage won’t save us. This is what I’m telling myself as I’m being browbeaten by Apple.
I have 27,023 items and counting in my phone’s library at this moment, and my iCloud hasn’t synced in weeks. That means the photos of my son standing in my Doc Martens, which he put on himself, are just existing in a thin layer of capture. More than just my mind, of course — the mind is no longer sufficient! But not a deep four-dimensional pillow of digital cloud either. Horror.
The items now spilling over my allotted storage “container” include screenshots, memes, photos of various official documents (because I don’t own a scanner or printer but need to do things like pay taxes and renew my car’s registration), precious family photos and videos plus thousands of duplicates *and* outtakes I probably can’t bear to part with, random photos of plants, photos of old photos, accidental videos my son takes when he takes my phone and says, “mine!” and lots else I’ve long forgotten. It’s all mine, though, and it’s in this virtual safe, so it seems.
They represent my mindset at nearly all times of a day, every day. Some days I don’t take any photos, actually. Other days I binge.
I’m being pitched hard to upgrade my cloud storage to 2 TERABYTES per month for $9.99. Like I’m feeling absolutely bullied, like I simply should not and CANNOT go on without more storage. What other options do we have? I’ve painted myself into this corner. It’s waking me up at night. Should I do it? If I upgrade, where does it end? I upgrade until I die and then it’s someone else’s problem, or digital trash.
I feel weirdly ashamed I need more storage. Like I’m lazy and reckless. Can I not edit my life as I go? Be more discerning with my photo-taking? Can I not be more mindful with my item management? Am I clinging to the present moment so much that I’m hoarding it while missing it?
The last three or four times I’ve busted out of my digital seams and was prompted to upgrade, I saw it as a challenge. I dived into my cache of photos, videos, and text messages and made some hard cuts. I was a huge Supermarket Sweep fan as a kid, so I knew right where to go — big ticket items. Digital turkeys - IYKYK. I deleted books and podcasts, and other rich, bite-heavy items like text threads.
But life is catching up to me. I’m confronted with the reality that I keep out-kicking the coverage.
I’ve posed the question before, what happens to our Google documents when we die? Do they know we’re never coming back? If family or friends can access our Drive, should they delete it all? Publish and share it? Try to finish it?
Do we have an obligation to sort and discard our digital trash before we go?
How are you managing this for yourself? Have you managed someone else’s digital life once they’re gone? What has that been like?
The truth is what gets saved is pretty random. Often times, despite our best efforts, something we’ve worked to save for years gets deleted in a fluke or lost in a wildfire.
The Five Remembrances in Buddhism serve to keep us grounded in truth, and the fourth and fifth in particular feel relevant here:
I will be separated from everything and everyone I hold dear. And the digital renderings of them represented by my entire iPhoto library, my Google Drive, my saved Chat GPT searches, all my digital items — trash and treasure — and my thoughtfully curated Instagram, BlueSky, Substack and other platforms. These may be deleted with a single keystroke, intentionally or unintentionally, by me or someone else.
My actions are my only true belongings. Damn! That’s deep. Gotta give that some space to really settle in. Most of what I do will and can never be captured on social media channels. People love to make those inspiring EOY reels with dozens of cool clips of what they did all year. That still ain’t it. The breadth of our actions can never be captured on camera. They are felt in the hearts and remembered in the bodies of others.
I just finished two different true crime docu-series that happen to feature the dark side of vlogging — or documenting life digitally for an external, other audience — as a pretty important sub-text. One was the Netflix series on van life influencer Gabby Petito and the other on Hulu about Mormon mom Youtuber and child abuser Ruby Franke.
Side note, is the word “vlog” the most graceless and absurd modern word we have? Who sounds or looks good saying it? In general, I’m a huge fan of portmanteaus, or words derived from the blending of two others. But they should roll off the tongue, make our life easier, and inspire us with the new, delightful concept they conjure. Think spork, chillax, frenemy, and Brangelina, some of the most pivotal concepts of modern history. Vlog just isn’t it, I’m sorry to say. I’ll probably dis-integrate it and go back to using video-blog, IF I ever type / say that again in my lifetime.
Gabby Petito had just begun a Youtube channel featuring her nascent van life with her abusive boyfriend when he strangled her and hid her body deep in the Wyoming wilderness. Ruby Franke ran a wildly successful Youtube channel called “8 Passengers” documenting idyllic Mormon family life with six kids as she descended deeper into faith-driven abuse of her children.
Obviously, video-blogging was not the reason Gabby lost her life (an abusive man bears that sole responsibility); nor was video-blogging the reason that Ruby abused her children (she bears that responsibility). But in those documentaries, we see evidence of the tension and distance created within immediate, present relationships by the act of documenting life for another, further-away audience.
The weird, wild thing about living in 2025 is that we have actual footage — some of the tens of thousands of items stuffed into our phones and computers — of the moment we shift from being present to the moment to being present to an imagined moment with an audience behind a computer screen. And the energetic toll that takes.
Dozens of outtakes from Gabby or Ruby introducing the footage they’re about to show or film. Sweet Gabby introducing their plans for the day and then trailing off, her face falls and she mutters something about it sounding so stupid. In one clip included in the Hulu doc, Ruby cheerfully introduces her family’s Easter plans and then — like being hijacked by a demon — interrupts herself by screaming downstairs to berate one of her children who is making too much noise.
We are watching the magic moment of going from being awake and alive to being on and awake and alive. But on for whom? For both women, we see how the very act of creating content via sharing daily life removes them from that daily life and leaves a hole where they once were (though literally still are) for whoever is literally with them to reckon with.
It’s weird. You know when you’re walking with someone physically but they’re on a work call or something? Greyed out is how my husband described it. There and not there. And you’re kind of reconciling that in-between.
As humans we live within concentric circles of care, who are also audiences. We are self-conscious creatures and performers at heart, even the shyest of us. We know that someone is looking at us, or will read what we’re writing, or will see what we show them. We all do it. It’s just to what degree and how mindfully.
I admit in my early days of journaling as a child, I know that I wrote with the express knowledge that someone someday might find my journals. So I can’t imagine I wrote my truest, most honest thoughts, but rather what I thought I should think and write. It’s truly mortifying to admit this because I’d recently read Diary of a Young Girl and I thought, well if Anne Frank’s journals could be found, then no little girl is safe! Mine, too, could someday be published for the world to read. LOL. Please excuse my ignorant hubris to equate myself with a young Jewish girl terrorized by the Holocaust. I was just understanding my sense of self in the world. Sometimes we overstate the case to make it…
How many audiences can we juggle at once? Who are all these digital items and journals for?
More recently, a dear friend described creating, painting, and writing as an act of service for our ancestors. I love that framing. One day I’ll be gone but my great-grandchildren will have some of my paintings and they can make meaning from that as they wish. One day I’ll be gone, but perhaps a journal of mine will be in possession of someone downstream in my lineage.
It’s important that I don’t write for them literally, meaning that I don’t perform what I think the'y’d want to read or what I want them to perceive of me. But rather that I stay rooted in my own ground — whatever it is in the moment — and document for them, or whomever, or no one ever, and most importantly myself, how I’m showing up. What I create — at least that content which is closest to the heart — should be another act of coming home to myself.
Two years ago, while pregnant with my son, I took the most wonderful meditation course with Tibetan Buddhist Lama and Queen Rod Owens on his Seven Homecomings practice. The practice, which he outlines in his book Love and Rage, is about connecting with your “audiences” in the sense of calling in your circles of care to witness and support you in your practice to get free. The seven circles you “come home to” are your guides and mentors; your wisdom texts; your community; your ancestors; the earth; silence; and yourself. Whew!
He’s teaching this practice again right now, online for the next month, and it’s not too late to jump in if you’re called. It’s never the wrong time to find ground.
Let’s end with the first three of Buddhism’s Five Remembrances, since we started with the last two.
I am of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old. This hits being a woman over 40 in Los Angeles who has not chosen to modify her face in any way (yet! my face lift is scheduled for next year). My postpartum hair loss grew in gray. Just trying to accept it all each day, baby. What a tough, amazing, rich practice that we are simply handed: aging. But whatever age you are is still not very old if you were a tree.
I am of the nature to have ill health; there is no way to escape having ill health. As we move closer to death, the body begins to break down. There is a mirroring with infancy and old age. Our bodies are lent to us for a certain period of time that is always fixed, though its terms are unknown. This is tough to take, personally. Gratitude for being pain free and able when you are. All we can do it condition the mind for resilience, openness, and love.
I am of the nature to die; there is no way to escape death. I am watching Bryan Johnson’s “Don’t Die” longevity initiative gain steam and intrigue. While it is about living well, why must if be framed as not dying? I’ve never met a nonagenarian who wanted to live forever. All of the oldest people I’ve known have actually wanted to die — in a good way! They were like, yep, I think this’ll do it! When you know you know. And if we spend all our effort and energy trying to stay young and avoiding death, are we really living well?
Love ya.
