One of the most devastating losses I had to experience just happened yesterday. What led to a relaxing beach day by the Jersey Shore with a split second moment of a decision to bring my GoPro with me at a time of distractions contributed to the loss of one of my favorite things that I’ve owned. This isn’t anything new though for a GoPro to disappear in the midst of doing outdoor activities, it’s actually quite common. On YouTube, you can watch treasure hunters that dive into rivers and the bodies of water to recover GoPros from there and some successfully finding the owners of them. Now, I wish my story would one day turn out like that, but it’s hard to imagine when your biggest fear was if the tide caught up to where I left it on the sand (right by the shore) and washed away my GoPro for good or if someone walking by had stolen it.
The thing is I am actually more disappointed in the loss of the unbacked up files I had in the SD card of my GoPro than I was of the actual item. From recording a lot of moments from my latest trips from Florida, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, the border of Utah, California and Joshua Tree National Park, Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park, and some other cool adventures taken in New Jersey along with the other files from all the way two years back with other adventures… it’s hard not to lose it and get depressed about not saving or recovering a lot of those.
The GoPro is an amazing action camera that records with wide lens, creating a remarkable perspective and angle of the human experience. To me, those memories that I had recorded were precious because you get to see those videos like it was just that very moment. The loss of my GoPro taught me that it wasn’t the actual material I was concerned with because they are absolutely replaceable and it gives me more incentive to buy a newer model but that those memories will always weigh more value than materials to me. If this was the 18 years old girl that I used to be, I would’ve been very concerned with how I spent $200+ on the camera and not so much focus on what was inside of it. However, the last couple years have changed me and had defined moments that led me to understanding how much I loved this country as I got to witness it and with these files, it meant evidence. It meant having to look back at even 10 years back and knowing I was able to live my life the way I chose to. It meant always remembering even if I get old and gray and looking back at my youth.
However, the biggest lesson I can learn from this loss was NOT backing up any of those files. That’s the smartest thing you can do and doing it right away is better. For me, I’ve neglected that part for several months because I thought one day when I’m free and not busy, “I’ll get to it”. This is where you should invest in a hard drive or better yet, get updated with their app. For so long, I didn’t recall seeing there was now an option you can actually back up those files through a cloud until I re-checked their app, yesterday after losing the GoPro. It’s simple things like that that this could’ve all been unavoidable.
This also challenged me to think, do we really define ourselves now through technology? Or do we really have a purpose behind why we love capturing so much through it? I know for a fact, my attachment to the camera went beyond just wanting to own it. I wanted to own those memories… but I was told by my sister, the most important thing you can have is your own memory and at least I do have memories of all of those once-in-a-lifetime moments.
Here is a video from Hawaii I put together once using my GoPro shots:
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