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Why I Don’t Trust Myself to “Do It Later” Anymore
I used to think I’d print my photos eventually. Then I realized “later” meant never and I was losing the stories behind the photos.
Posted 1/20/2026
Remembrance
Why I Don’t Trust Myself to “Do It Later” Anymore
I realized I couldn’t trust myself to “do it later” the day I tried to remember why a photo mattered, and couldn’t.
It was one of those “2 years Ago Today” memories that popped up. My partner was sitting on the kitchen floor, staring into a stove, in a kitchen that wasn’t ours. I remember loving that photo when I took it. I remember thinking, " This one is special.
When this memory popped up, I had no idea what this photo was about.
Was it a sick day? Are we on vacation? Was he making something special? I stared at the photo, waiting for the feeling to come back. It didn’t.
That was the moment it clicked: I hadn’t lost the photo, but I had lost the memory.
I used to be a do-it-later person.
Later felt responsible. Later felt optimistic. Later felt like a version of me with more energy, more time, and a color-coded calendar. Later was calm. Later had her life together.
Spoiler alert: later never did.
The Lie of “I’ll Get to It Eventually”
For years, I told myself I didn’t need to worry about preserving memories now. I had them. They were safe. They lived on my phone, backed up somewhere in the cloud, floating comfortably in the digital universe.
I’d scroll through my camera roll and think:
I’ll organize these later.
I’ll print them when I have more time.
I’ll make a book when life slows down.
Which is a funny thing to say, because life has never once slowed down. Not even a little. What actually happened was this: photos piled up. Months blurred together. I forgot the small stories, the funny thing my kids said, the reason we were all laughing, the tiny details that made the moment feel like something. And the more time passed, the harder it felt to go back.
The Emotional Weight of an Overstuffed Camera Roll
At some point, my camera roll stopped feeling like a gift and started feeling like a chore. Thousands of photos. Duplicates. Screenshots I didn’t need. Blurry shots I couldn’t delete because what if that moment mattered? Instead of joy, it gave me a strange, low-level guilt. These were my memories. My life. My people. And they were just… sitting there.
Waiting for a future version of me who apparently had unlimited free time and a strong desire to curate.
Why “Later” Is the Enemy of Memory
Here’s what I finally realized: memories don’t disappear all at once.
They fade.
They lose context.
They lose detail.
That photo of a random Tuesday? It wasn’t random. It was the day everything went wrong, and we laughed about it anyway. It was ordinary and meaningful at the same time. But when I waited too long, all of that disappeared. Later wasn’t protecting my memories. Later was quietly erasing them.
Enter: The Monthbook
I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly become someone who had it all together. What I did decide was this: I needed a system that didn’t rely on motivation, memory, or my future self’s best intentions.
That’s when Monthbooks started to make sense.
Instead of saving everything for one mythical weekend when I’d finally “catch up,” I started doing it as I went, one month at a time. No pressure to make it perfect. No massive backlog. No emotional weight of an entire year staring back at me. Just one small, manageable slice of life.
The Relief of Staying Caught Up
There’s something deeply calming about knowing you’re not behind. When I finish a Monthbook, I don’t feel accomplished in a hustle-y way. I feel lighter. That month is done. Saved. Off my phone and into my hands. And maybe more importantly, I remember it. I remember why the photos mattered, not just that they existed. And so does my family.
Small Effort, Big Payoff
Here’s the part that surprised me most: staying caught up actually takes less energy than procrastinating. Procrastination is sneaky. It feels like rest, but it’s really just mental clutter, the constant background noise of I should really do something about that. Monthbooks remove that noise. You’re not asking yourself to document your entire life. You’re simply closing the chapter on the last 30 days.
Memory-Keeping for Real Life
I don’t need my books to be perfect. In fact, I don’t want them to be. I don’t need every photo to be frame-worthy. I want them to be honest. Messy. Real. A little blurry. Monthbooks give me permission to keep memories the way they actually happened, not the way Instagram would prefer them. And that feels like a gift.
The Version of Me I Trust Now
I don’t trust myself to “do it later” anymore. Not because I’m lazy or forgetful, but because I’m human. I trust systems. I trust habits. I trust things that work with my life instead of against it.
Monthbooks don’t require a burst of motivation or a free weekend that may never come. They just ask me to show up consistently, in small ways.
If You’re Like Me
If you’ve ever said:
I’ll get to it someday. I’ll organize it when things calm down.I’ll remember this.I promise, you won’t remember it the way you think you will. But you can keep it. One month at a time. Because later is unreliable. But now? Now actually works.
By the way, the mystery photo? Thank goodness I added a caption to it in my Chatbook.
It turns out it was a quiet, ordinary moment I never wanted to forget. A time when my partner’s dad was sick, and we would bring him dinner. He was simply sitting by the oven, watching the insignificant meal we had made for him. Nothing remarkable on the surface. No big milestone. No perfectly framed moment.
And yet, now that photo means everything to me.
Because it reminds me of the everyday moments I want to hold on to, the small, tender ones you don’t realize are shaping you while you’re living them. The ones that don’t feel important until time has passed. The ones that, stitched together, make up a life.
If you’re ready to start your Monthbooks, here’s a simple step-by-step guide to help you get started.
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