A scanning sprint through most of the personal correspondence you’ve received over the last fifty years replays your life in high definition. So many people – so many memories. The experience was accentuated by the exercise I was conducting in parallel to systematically examine all my work documents to ready the collection for any interested repository. I got to wondering if resurfacing it all again, was making any significant changes to my memory and brain generally. However, I don’t think there any apparent changes to my state of mind – I’m perhaps just more, well, AWARE of what’s been going on.

Anyway I finished scanning the whole letter collection yesterday. Despite my intention to only keep the most precious originals, I ended up with a substantial number of items. Perhaps this was hardly surprising given the previous work I’ve done on reasons for keeping document and mementos. However, those insights seemed to count for nothing as I stormed my way through the mass of letters and cards, keen to just get through the job, a little dazed by all the memories, knowing I needed to throw away most of the items for an established rationale, but knowing that once I had torn them up that was it – gone forever. It was spur of the moment instinct that dictated what I kept rather than any clear reasoning; and now, at the end of the process I have two full concertina files from relatives and friends, an envelope of airmail letters from my parents who were abroad in my late teens/early twenties, and all the letters and cards my wife has sent me in the 37 years I have known her. I intend to keep the latter indefinitely; however, I think I need to do some further work on the rest if only to reduce the amount of space they are taking up.

Hence, I plan to do a reasons-for-keeping analysis on them which I will then subsequently compare with the findings from my previous reasons-for-keeping exercise. The aim will be twofold: a) to identify which items can be thrown away, and b) to expand my reasons-for-keeping analysis to include personal correspondence. As a by product of the analysis, I may also be able to derive an approximation of the volume of correspondence I received over the period in question – such data is always useful for comparison purposes when assessing other examples or when considering before and after situations (for example, before and after the introduction of email).

I’ve scanned all the As, Bs and Cs now and am beginning to appreciate just how much correspondence can build up over a period of thirty or forty years. It’s especially noticeable when it’s not in uniform paper sizes which can just go through the scanner’s sheet feeder; but instead is a variety of different sized cards and writing paper which have to be scanned individually. With such a volume of material, I think it unlikely that I will ever reread all of it in detail again – though I guess if it was on a tablet I might dip into some of it from time to time. Certainly, having it easily available in digital form for reference purposes (to establish dates, events and places), could be very useful – but probably only to me as the recipient. I feel it unlikely that anyone else would have any interest in it. Indeed, I think it’s probably true to say that even I probably won’t experience the feelings I had when I first received and read these missives because I personally have changed in the interim and so has the context in which the letters were written and read. So, now they can only be re-read from a new perspective which includes one’s own current situation and present relationship with the sender. Despite these rather subtle points, its undoubtedly true that the letters all stimulate precious memories and feelings, and so it’s reassuring to know that I will have the digital versions after I have torn up the physical documents and taken them out with the recycling. I firmly believe that scanning and destroying this material is definitely the right thing to do for following reasons: first because the digital version is likely to get used much more than the hardcopy; second, because it reduces the clutter in the loft; and third, because it will be one (physical) thing less to deal with by those who have to clear up after me when I die.

I’ve been keeping the letters I receive for as long as I can remember,  but I haven’t got room in my new study for even the most recent missives. Instead, the archive concertina file and the folders containing just the last few years now all reside in the loft – not very easy to get at and taking up space.  So, I’ve decided it’s time to digitise. I had already been keeping Word versions of particularly informative emails in folders on my PC – a folder for each person and named First Name and  Surname (on the basis that I’m more likely to remember most first names rather than most surnames). The actual files are titled “Date – Brief description of the information contained”. The digitised letters will go into these folders. A few days ago I started on the ‘A’s  and having got through five names have already discovered the following:

• The filenames  need to include the names of the people concerned, i.e. “Date – First name and Surname – Brief description of the information contained”, to ensure that each file is clearly identified.
• For people I’ve lost touch with or who have died (all of the first five sets of letters I’ve dealt with have fallen into one of these two categories), I decided to scan all of their letters into a single PDF File and to store them in a special folder called “XX – Lost touch or dead”. The filenames of the PDFs are “First name and second name – XX – relationship with me, start and end dates of the letters contained”.
• The first set of letters I dealt with were some 45 years old  and I’d forgotten the surname. Luckily I was eventually able to find it in my digitised memento files (so they do have a use!). However, it’s clearly possible that, especially for old items, some salient information could be lost forever.
• Assembling these collections of letters and looking through them brought back many memories and prompted thoughts about the relationship I had with the individuals. In the case of one “auntie” (a lifetime friend of my mother) who I corresponded with for about 30 years (mostly through Christmas cards), I started to regret never having made the effort to meet her in person.
• Having scanned the letters and then seeing them all collected together in a PDF document, really made me think of the value of friendships and of how little time we have on the planet. None of us really know why we are here, nor how the universe came about, and as individuals we have such a relatively short existence. I pondered that having friends who we can share our thoughts in the midst of our uncertain brief time on earth, is precious indeed.
• I tore up the physical letters after I had digitised them, and , of course, felt a wrench as I did so.  Undoubtedly the physical objects possess characteristics of touch, smell and presence that won’t be reproduced in the digital version. However, the digital versions are undoubtedly much more accessible. How much I’ll refer to them in the future, and what other uses I may put them to, are interesting questions.