Snapshots From Your Future
For the better part of the last year, I’ve pretty much completely eliminated my doom scrolling with a single app called “Feeeed”. It’s pretty much the app I’ve wanted to build for a long time. A simple RSS feed reader. But man, it’s polished. I can easily subscribe to just about anything with it including YouTube channels, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts, and of course all the cool random blogs I find. It’s actually become my primary means of reading Hacker News as well. It has a really clean reader mode that honestly works better than anything else I’ve tried (other than Yazzy).
However, I think my absolute favorite feature is the “photo flashbacks” widget. You give the app full access to your on-device photo library and it will integrate random old photos from your library with a little date stamp. Sure, iOS has it’s own photo widget but it’s a little too curated sometimes. I don’t know how Feeeed determines which photos to show, but I have gotten so much enjoyment from them. Sometimes it’s just a random pocket photo, but most of them time it’s something pretty interesting. It helps that a while ago I went through the hassle of finally pulling all my photos out of Google Photos and imported them into iCloud. I’d been using Google Photos for (literally) my entire adult life (and even beyond) so I truly see photos from well over a decade ago, sometimes two decades. Seeing all the random things I have in my photo library from 10 years ago just gives me such an incredible sense of presence.
I’ve recently been granted a fair bit of mental clarity due to some life changes I’ve made. I can cast my mind’s eye back in my life and work out some nuggets. One thing I’ve realized is that my household growing up was fairly contentious. My parents fought a lot and honestly there aren’t a ton of memories of having fun together with our entire family. I had a lot of fun with my brothers, and we spent a lot of time doing random things with our mom. My dad usually worked and when he got home he really liked watching TV. I remember despising that to some extent but honestly, I get it. I’m thankful I even had a family and home at all, but at the same time, the contention was really distressing to me. My older brother seemed happy to ignore it all, and my younger brother was too young to really know what was happening. What I’m trying to say here is that a lot of times, especially times that everyone was at home at the same time, I wasn’t super happy and quite nervous.
I remember one Saturday growing up my parents were fighting and I was finding myself caught in the middle, so I decided I was going to run away from home and just be by myself. We’ve all probably been there. I think I got on my bike and rode down to the river for a couple of hours, but eventually I got hungry and decided I’d try and stick it out, so I went home. Some time later, we went to a family reunion with my Mom’s side. There was a swimming pool and we were all swimming together. Somehow a few of my uncles decided to launch me up in the air out of the pool. I was young and skinny and with two of them they could really get me flying. I loved it. It was quite literally the best thing I’d ever experienced. And I had a very distinct thought cross my mind: “I’m glad I didn’t run away from home or else I would have missed out on this.” Even today, that experience is one of the highlights of my life.
So, the question I ask myself now, is what would would-be runaway Dave say if he could see a snapshot from his future of that incredible day getting launched in the pool? Would it have made that day any easier for him? I wish Feeeed had a widget that would show me snapshots from my future. There’d still probably be a lot of blurry pocket pics, but there would also be some really interesting photos. I’ve been pondering this a lot. Snapshots from my future. How could this work? Is there something I can do right now to expand my mental gaze into the future?
The best answer I’ve found is to gaze into the known future whenever I see one of those photo flashbacks that make me smile. I write a little mental note to previous Dave about some of the things to look forward to. I think about the friends I’ve made and lost, the things I’m proud of, and honestly some of the tragedies and how I can better prepare for them.
I recall watching an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook where he said something to the effect of “At Apple, we only look to the future. You won’t find an Apple museum here on campus anywhere. It’s not that we don’t value the past, but we always want to be looking forwards.” To this day, I still have a fairly “anxious-depressive” personality and I will find myself ruminating about all the good times and nearly become future-blind. I just can’t see beyond whatever issue I’m facing right now. But when I’m able to regain my future sight, the possibilities open up. I’m much happier and more productive.
Another strategy I find fascinating came from a conversation I had with my friend Tom MacWright on the Interrobang Podcast. At right about the 1-hour mark I asked him what kind of things he takes notes on. He told me he that he’ll often write down things he’s nervous or uneasy about. He said that it both helps kind of just get it out of his head, but also serves him in the future to be able to retrospect and see that the things he was worried about ended up not being that bad. While I haven’t personally adopted this strategy directly, when I see those photo flashbacks I ask myself what was the Dave back then stressed out about? What ended up being worth the stress? So far I haven’t found anything that really ended up being all that bad in hindsight.
I think what I’m really trying to say is that looking backwards usually isn’t helpful. Looking forwards is. When I see those photos from my past, I can stand in my past shoes and look forward instead of standing in my present shoes and looking back. Doing this helps keep me future oriented and can help ease the tendency I have to ruminate.
What strategies do you have? If you have anything you’d like to share with me or the world, you can send me an email Reply using the link below this post.