I thought I would handle this task in a few minutes, but it turned into a day-long process of sifting through my photographs looking for the ones that I thought were cool and in some ways expressive of something about me. For the back of my card, I selected photographs I’d taken while traveling. And so I went the way of Moo, full-sized option. Still, despite my huge divestment in paper, I decided that I still needed business cards. But for everything else, there is Google. That’s the sort of thing that’s in the file four boxes. And I do have some other meaningful ephemera, like, for instance, my all time favorite booklet Parking Lots of Butte: A Guide to Selected Historic Parking Lots in Butte, Second Edition. You know, the ones with the wide black border, with the name of the park set in reverse white Helvetica print? The design is called Unigrid. In this category, I include select maps - I have a great tiny one of Paris ticket stubs, like from the Museo Frida Kahlo and I really like the National Park Service brochures. Now, there were a few things in those folders that I definitely knew I would keep - as a writer they hold a certain charge of creative inspiration. I also realized that over the years, I’ve spent far more time organizing those files than I ever spent using the information that was in them. I realized that most of the information I’d accumulated was outdated almost as soon as I put in the files. The truth is, most of my files were not scanned - instead, they went into many, many large black trash bags. But once I got settled, instead of replacing the filing cabinets, I acquired a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner and an external hard drive, which enabled me to reduce four large, two drawer filing cabinets worth of paper to four file boxes. When I left my marital home, I took with me the contents of four large filing cabinet - files of information I’d accumulated on the destinations I’ve visited as a travel writer. And while paper is wonderful, it is also cumbersome. Setting my paperphilia aside, part of my “life transition,” let’s call it, has involved scaling back my possessions - I’m a single gal now, I need to travel light. Although I have come to rely on Evernote to an extent that is nearly frightening, I still have a collection of Moleskine notebooks, and always have one my purse for certain exigencies of notekeeping.īut still over this past year I have to confess that I considered that I might never order my own business cards again. I’m glad about this, because I truly love paper. My hunch is that this social convention won’t change: it gives everyone something to do while negotiating the tricky business of making a smooth departure from a first meeting there’s still no better technology if you’ve totally forgotten someone’s name. Whether it’s in the United States or abroad, and whether I’ve already been emailed and telephoned and Twitter followed, and although certainly it would be far more efficient to just trade contact info via smartphone, people still seem to really want those 3 1/2 by 2 inch piece of paper. Until I didn’t have them, I’d never really noticed how often I’m asked for a business card while I’m traveling. I went almost a year without them as I went through my divorce, which changed all the pertinent details that you’d put on a card. I’ve been thinking about this week, because I just ordered myself some business cards. I’m talking about all the other papers you accumulate and distribute along the way. Travel involves plenty of paperwork, and here I am not talking about official documents, like a passport.
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