The Ordinary Life Archive
Build an archive of the life you're living while you're living it.
The days move quickly. So much of a life disappears without ceremony—the color of the sky at dinner, a recipe in your mother’s handwriting, the thing someone said that made you laugh, the receipt from a perfect afternoon, what was blooming, what you were listening to, what you kept in your pocket.
The Ordinary Life Archive is a practice of noticing and keeping some of it.
Not everything.
Just what asks to be remembered.
BEGIN YOUR ORDINARY LIFE ARCHIVE →
Free to begin. Join me on Substack.
WHAT IS AN ORDINARY LIFE ARCHIVE?
An Ordinary Life Archive is a personal collection of the small evidence of a life—the things you notice, collect, write down, photograph, tuck away, make marks about, and don't want to lose.
It might hold a grocery receipt beside a pressed leaf.
A photograph beside a sentence overheard at lunch.
A paint swatch, a ticket stub, a wrapper, a list, the colors of one particular sky.
There are no rules for what belongs.
You aren't trying to preserve everything.
You're simply paying attention to what asks to be kept.
NOTICE IT. COLLECT IT. KEEP IT.
NOTICE
Pay attention to what catches.
COLLECT
Gather a little evidence.
KEEP
Give it somewhere to live.
Your archive might live in a notebook, an envelope, a box, a photo folder, a journal, or somewhere entirely your own.
You don't need special supplies to begin.
And you definitely don't need to catch up.
Start with the life that's happening today.
Begin Your Archive
I've made a simple Ordinary Life Archive Starter Sheet to help you begin, along with the first Collecting Sheet—a small invitation to notice something from the life you're living right now.
I'm sharing the Ordinary Life Archive as a free public practice on Substack, where you'll also find my essays, Field Notes, studio glimpses, and ongoing invitations to notice, collect, and keep.
Come begin with me.
BEGIN THE ORDINARY LIFE ARCHIVE →
You'll join my free Substack and receive your Starter Sheet there.
ordinary life is material.