I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have

... See more

Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills that demand time, patience, and a willingness to look beyond the surface.

To collect well is to resist algorithmic influence. A true collection reflects deeply personal values and a genuine desire to... See more

to save, to add to our collection, the action both etches it a little deeper into our hearts and creates a context around the artifact itself, whether text, song, image, or video. The context is not just for ourselves but for other people, the knit-together, shared context of culture at large. That’s what Benjamin described when he wrote, “The

... See more