I recently had cause to use an old flash card, and later as I was downloading pictures I found a few of the kids that I'd never processed from just about a year ago.

There was one of Silas, at home, looking none-too-happy on a vintage tractor that once belonged to me (or probably more accurately my older sister) and now takes up a parking place at our house.

And there were a few in Vermont at a place we stopped for brunch before making our way to my aunt's house. Annabel was wearing her dance leotard and ladybug boots. She wanted a fruit plate with cottage cheese.

I snapped a picture as the waitress poured me a coffee.

Strange these little snapshots from the past.

I wonder how they were overlooked in the first place; then I wonder about all the moments that weren't overlooked.

And it brings me here, to this place, where I've dumped words and pictures for years thinking I was amassing some important archive of our lives.

But I end up thinking: "How much of this SHOULD be overlooked?"

I never really had my finger on the pulse of anything that's drawn readers ... what makes me think my own kids will one day find any of this interesting?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired and anxious about the move.

Writing such trivial points as the world goes to hell in a handbasket ... Iraq, Iran, Pakistan ... putting a green film over my icon on twitter seems hardly a solution.

Perhaps writing every day, while a good excercise in persistence, hasn't been good for my perspective.

I feel alone.

In a vast universe.

I know I'm probably not quitting this monster I've made any more than I'd walk away from my flesh and blood children. But I'm in need of a new point of view. I need some perspective. Because for as much as I was present when these pictures were taken, I'm beginning to understand that I was absent a reason to make them.