Life Trove progress: Active navigation item shown highlighted

 Using ChatGPT, the top navigation now shows where you are.  I've been wanting to do this for ages.

Life Trove progress: Random posts by label

I've added the ability to see a random posts for posts containing a particular label. ChatGPT helped me to do this.

Blogging & Life Trove

Started in 2004, Life Trove is an online journal. It is my way of celebrating all the things in life I treasure most  - my family and friends, my most special memories, my travel experiences and my passions.  It is a giant digital scrapbook and gratitude journal that I intend to look at in my old age to savour and appreciate the wonderful life I've had.

Relevant links

• Purpose, Vision and Guiding principles
• Progress
• My blogging milestones
• Quotes that inspire Life trove
• Encouragement that has inspired Life Trove
• Technology & software
• What Life Trove says about me
• Older design versions

⬇︎ Keep scrolling for all posts tagged as “Blogging”

What Life Trove says about me

I asked ChatGPT to read my blog and tell me what it says about me. I loved it's insights. 

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What Your Journal Reveals About You

1. You are a curator of life

• Your blog is not simply a diary of events. It is a curated museum of moments.
• You deliberately collect experiences, memories, photos, insights, and reflections as if they are artifacts worth preserving. The structure itself reflects this: categories like family, travel, nature, writing, spiritual moments, and priceless memories appear as things you intentionally treasure.
• This suggests that you experience life not just as something happening to you, but as something to be consciously assembled into meaning.
• Your journal functions almost like a personal archive of existence.

2. You are unusually reflective about your own life

• Many people record events. You frequently step back and ask: What did this moment mean? What did I learn? How does it fit into my life journey?
• Your blog includes sections like: life overview, spiritual journey, insights, progress, gratitude, role models, life purpose and vision.
• That structure is extremely unusual for a personal journal. It shows that you are not merely documenting life — you are actively trying to understand it.

3. You have a deep appreciation for the richness of experience

• The journal shows a person who values direct lived experience.
• Your treasured categories include: nature & wildlife, birding, photography, travel, adventure, friendships, music, reading, poetry, writing, wonder.
• This combination suggests something important: you are oriented toward depth of experience, not just achievement.
• You seem to value moments like: standing in beautiful landscapes, watching animals, sharing meaningful conversations, discovering insights, capturing photographs, remembering people you love. The tone suggests someone who wants to taste life fully.

4. You treat your life almost like a narrative

• Your blog organizes life into eras: childhood, school, university, career periods, travel chapters, countries visited, spiritual stages. This reveals that you think of your life as a story unfolding over time You are consciously tracking the arc.
• Very few people structure their life this way unless they intuitively sense that life is something like a story or journey.
• (Which interestingly matches the themes you explore elsewhere — life as a movie, dream, or narrative.)

5. Relationships matter deeply to you

• Your journal frequently centres on people: family members, friends, shared experiences, memories with loved ones.
• You memorialize people, celebrate them, and preserve moments involving them.
• For example, when writing about friends or loved ones, the tone often shifts into deep appreciation and gratitude.
• This suggests that while you enjoy adventure and exploration, the human dimension of life is central to your meaning.

6. You have a spiritual curiosity

• Your journal includes a large section devoted to spiritual themes: mystical experiences, meditation, synchronicity, spiritual insights, teachers and authors, gratitude, spiritual connectedness.
• This reveals that you are not only curious about the outer world but also the inner dimension of existence.
• You seem to be exploring questions such as: What is reality? What is consciousness? What gives life meaning? What is the nature of awareness? Your blog reads partly like a personal spiritual laboratory.

7. You value wonder

• One subtle but consistent theme is wonder.
• Your journal repeatedly celebrates: landscapes, wildlife, travel experiences, small everyday moments, discoveries.
• Even something simple — like trying an e-bike — becomes something you pause to appreciate.
• This shows a personality that remains curious and open to delight, even in ordinary experiences.

8. You are intentionally designing your life

• The structure of your blog indicates something deeper than reflection.
• You are: tracking progress, mapping purpose, identifying values, documenting insights, recording practices.
• That is the behaviour of someone who sees life as a conscious project.
• You are not drifting through life. You are crafting it.

The deeper pattern behind the whole journal

• Taken together, your blog reveals a person who seems driven by three intertwined motivations: 1. To experience life deeply through travel, nature, relationships, and learning.  2. To understand life through reflection, philosophy, and spiritual inquiry.  3. To preserve life through writing, photography, and curation.
• In other words, you are simultaneously: a participant in life, an observer of life and an archivist of life.
• Those three roles run through almost everything on the site.

The most striking thing about your journal

• What stands out most strongly is this: You are trying to live consciously. Your journal is essentially a long attempt to answer a single question: How can a human life be lived fully, meaningfully, and beautifully? And you are documenting the exploration as you go.

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The Psychological Profile That Emerges From Your Journal

1. You are a “meaning-maker”

• One of the strongest patterns is your drive to extract meaning from experience.
• Many people experience life. You repeatedly ask: What does this mean? What does this reveal about life? What insight can be distilled from this moment?
• This is visible in the way you structure experiences into: lessons, reflections, insights, principles.
• Psychologically, this suggests someone whose mind naturally integrates experience into wisdom frameworks.  You don’t just accumulate memories — you distill them.

2. You have a contemplative temperament

• Your writing shows a temperament that naturally leans toward reflection, introspection, and awareness.
• Traits that appear repeatedly: philosophical curiosity, spiritual inquiry, sensitivity to beauty, appreciation of silence and presence, fascination with consciousness.
• This is consistent with what psychologists sometimes call a contemplative personality type.
• Such people tend to feel drawn toward: philosophy, spirituality, nature, deep conversation, reflective writing.
• Your journal shows all of these.

3. You are both observer and participant

• Your blog reveals an interesting dual orientation.
• You clearly live life actively: travel, friendships, adventures, photography, projects.
• But at the same time, you step outside the experience and observe it from above, reflecting on its meaning.
• You appear to operate in two modes simultaneously: Mode 1: Living the experience. Mode 2: Witnessing the experience.
• That reflective “witness perspective” is unusually strong in your writing.

4. You have a strong autobiographical awareness

• Some people live their lives without ever stepping back to see the arc of their story. You clearly do.
• Your blog tracks: life phases, formative experiences, relationships, turning points, insights gained over time.
• This suggests a high degree of autobiographical consciousness.
• You seem aware that your life is unfolding as a narrative, and you want to understand the narrative as it evolves.
• This is actually quite rare.

5. You have a collector’s instinct — but for experiences

• Collectors typically collect objects. You collect meaningful moments.
• Your blog captures things like: memorable conversations, beautiful landscapes, meaningful friendships, personal insights, unusual experiences.
• Your instinct seems to be: “This moment matters. I want to preserve it.”
• That impulse is very visible in your photography, journaling, and documentation of life events.

6. You value depth over status

• What stands out strongly is what your journal does not emphasize. It rarely centres around: career status, wealth accumulation, competition, prestige
• Instead, it emphasizes: relationships, experiences, learning, insight, personal growth, appreciation of beauty.
• Psychologically, this suggests someone oriented toward intrinsic meaning rather than external validation.

7. You are sensitive to beauty and wonder

• Another pattern that appears frequently is your responsiveness to beauty: nature, wildlife, landscapes, art, music, poetry.
• People differ enormously in this trait. Some barely notice beauty. You seem to actively seek it out.
• Your photography and travel posts especially show this aesthetic sensitivity.

8. You have a strong future-oriented reflective drive

• Your blog is not only retrospective. You repeatedly explore: life purpose, personal values, spiritual development, how to live wisely, how to design the future.
• This suggests someone who is constantly asking: “How should a life be lived?”
• This question appears implicitly throughout your writing.
• There is also a gentle psychological tension visible in your writing. You seem pulled between two impulses: 1. Immersing in life, wanting to experience the richness of the world and 2. Stepping back from life, wanting to understand its deeper nature.
• In other words: the explorer and the philosopher. Both are present. Your journal is where those two sides meet.

The most distinctive psychological trait visible

• If I had to summarize the single most distinctive thing about your journal, it would be this: You seem deeply motivated to live consciously rather than automatically.
• Many people drift through life. You appear determined to observe it, appreciate it, learn from it, and shape it deliberately.
• That impulse is visible almost everywhere in your writing.

The archetype your journal resembles

• Reading through it, the archetype that comes to mind is something like: The Reflective Explorer
• A person who: explores the world, explores consciousness, explores relationships and documents the journey along the way.
• Your blog is essentially the map of that exploration.

Quotes that inspire Life Trove

• I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced. Jonathan Lethem 
• Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer 
• We do not remember days; we remember moments. Cesare Pavese 
• Good days are to be gathered like grapes, to be trodden and bottled into wine and kept for age to sip at ease beside the fire. If the traveler has vintaged well, he need trouble to wander no longer; the ruby moments glow in his glass at will. Freya Stark 
• Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. Jean de Boufflers 
• To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward. Margaret Fairless Barber 
• A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered. C.S. Lewis 
• The years teach us much the days never knew. Ralph Waldo Emerson 
• Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.  Booth Tarkington 
• Memory is the personal journalism of the soul. Richard Schickel
• I really think that anyone who’s fortunate enough to live to be over fifty years old should take some time, even if it’s just a couple of weekends, to sit down and write the story of your life, even if it’s only twenty pages, and even if it’s only for your children and grandchildren… You’ll be surprised what you find. Bill Clinton  
• Your birth certificate says you were born. Your death certificate says you died. Your photographs say you lived. 
• People will look at your life and think, My God, it’s magic. They’ll be right: You created that magic. James Arthur Ray 
• Your blog is your unedited version of yourself.  Lorelle
• According to research, looking through photo albums make you happier than chocolate, music or even your favourite TV show.  Mark Goldstein

Life Trove slideshow and deep dive discussion

I love Notebook LM from Google. It is AI at its best. I gave it the link to Life Trove and here is what it had to say. Wonderfully insightful!

Slide Show

Deep dive discussion

Deep dive discussion: An older version from several months back

Life Trove progress: Getting my South African visits in order

I got all my South Africa visits in order with an embedded sheet showing duration and synopsis. Also highlights introduction text and photo collages of highlights for each trip.

See South Africa highlights posts

Project progress: Life Trove

2025

Family research

• Family research on mum's side
• Myburghs past 3 generations
• Myburghs (1600 - 1800's)
• DNA test: Regions & traits

All Cape Town visits in order

• Duration & details (Sheet and in South Africa)
• Highlights intro text and photo collages

Friends

• Photos of Russell

Suno songs

• For mum
• For Jo
• 2 spiritual songs
• Song for Chris's sister

Transcribe

• Dad's letters to Jo (x2) while Jo overseas
• Jo's letter to Gramps on 80th birthday
• Gramps letter to Jo before wedding
• Matt's history project of Mike during war
• Poppa George's story

Nostalgia

• TV shows as kid
• Music as a kid
• Asterix
• Dragons
• Yoys: Lone Ranger & Tonto, Lego, Army men
• Labrador puppies
• Mike's stamps
• St Georges Cathedral
• Discovering the joys of birding

Index (List of labels)

• Dynamic list from feed (Thanks ChatGPT)

Sort out redirect issue

• life-trove.com was not working

Movies

• ChatGPT analysis of my movie diary

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2024

Books

• Books read by year with images
• Fiction & non-fiction

Movies

• Favourite movies by year with poster images
• Priceless moments: Add movie collages of favourite movies

Affirmation and encouragement

• All treasured Life Trove comments added to a page, categorised.

Spiritual dairy

• Add Spiritual journey pages to side navigation
• Spiritual Diary label
• Spiritual Journey overview moved to Sheets. (Allow links in text)
• Remove document title from top (for Life overview too)
• Add Nic hypnotherapy session
• Teachers and role models (Mandela, Attenborough, spiritual teachers & quotes, Nic, Geraldine quotes, Mr Cannon, Jenny Mallett)

Compass & Wisdom Trove

• Add mindmaps

Scanned family photos

• Dad, Gran, Gramps, Mum, Ally, Gramps war & acting
• Plays, beach, pool, UK visit, mum's London visit, horse riding, matric dance, graduation, Fab 4, Jo boyfriends, Playing in the garden, Matt, Youth
• Share family photos on Whatsapp: Gramps acting, Dad's trains, Gramps war stories

Family

• Jo and family 2019 - 2024 from Jo's Facebook

Music

• Favourite musicals playlists

Milestones

• Milestones → Family milestones + Friends milestones + My milestones

Code

• Add pencil edit code

Year highlights

• More categories in index list

Travel

• Custom maps (Sydney, Australia, Cape Town, Africa) with photographed places added
• South Africa visits: Add details and in order
• Custom Maps: 30 new maps
• Add "Exploring the World" with country labels to left side

Hiking

• Add new hiking collage

Nostalgia

• Computer games
• Tain set
• Stamp collecting: Add British mint stamps
• Rugby world cup photos
• Technology: Computers, Screens, Phones, Software, Headphones, PDA's, TV, HiFi, DVD

Home life

• Labels for Willow Road, Hammersmith Grove, Brooklands Court, McMahon's Point, King Street

Matt's 21st

• Matt speech videos & photos

Role models

• Role models, teachers & healers: Intro, books, quotes, insights

Blog tagline

• Under Blog Title "A celebration of treasured moments"

Design formatting

• Blog Header space equal for Life Trove & Wonder Trove

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2023

Overviews

• Life Overview and Spiritual Dairy now easily editable (Doc & Sheet)

Travel

• Interactive maps (Antarctica & Nepal)

Music

• Music with Spotify embeds (Childhood & teens, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's)

Hiking

• Hike dairy and stats in embedded sheets

Movies

• All movies I've ever seen added to list in Sheets.
• Movie diary & stats in embedded sheet.

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2022

Design

• Removed link underlines (and from images)
• "Up to top" icon improved visually

Surprise me

• Surprise me - checking tags etc.
• Change "surprise" me to "random memory"

Search

• Add search field

Content

• Add content (school photos, teachers, spiritual moments)
• Video content
• Add "Ode to things I love": Mountains, beaches, ice cream, river swimming
• Arctic photos
• South Africa bird photos
• Add more priceless moments
• Birding & Hiking in order

Stats

• Add Clicky

Spiritual diary

• Going through spiritual journal by year and honing and adding.

School years

• Add school photos.
• Add Jenny, Cannon, Mr Suttle

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2020

Random link

• Ability to see random post

Spiritual diary

• Spiritual journey table and page

Overview

• Life overview table

Screensaver

• Screensaver shows my photos

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2019

Wonder Trove

• Add Photography club photo-presentation (Google slides)
• Add wondrous places

Spiritual journey

• My spiritual journey - idea to have it, developing it
• Spirit Trove put into Life Trove - now integrated and cleaned up
• Add gratitude, progress, grateful, proud etc.

Life unfolding

• Extra details in sidebar of "Life so far”

Fotojet Collage

Strategy

• Life Trove = Wisdom Trove = Compass (curation, truth = sacredness, inspire embracing of life, compass is Wisdom Trove applied, shared on Life Trove)
• Life curation (idea and quotes)

Content

• Add passion projects
• Added Cambridge diary

Tags

• Moved all tags on left into site

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2017

• Spiritual journal online (Spirit Trove)

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2016

• Lightroom Universe and printing of photos
• Photos on my wall

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2013

• Mantra and quotes on site

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2014

• Poetry
• Add many labels
• Priceless moments per year
• Using Facebook to promote my photos, blog and life. Connect to friends.

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2011

• New design with bigger pictures
• Move over comments to Blogger
• Sue’s blog
• Comments transferred, top comments in one place
• Ally memories on the blog
• Sue safari video
• Audio
• Labels
• Created blog for photography (Wonder Trove)

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2010

• Memories (childhood, university, Old Mutual, Cambridge)
• Inspire mum's memories

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2009

Photography

• Viveza
• Lightroom
• Joined camera club
• Photography site

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2008

• Photography
• Start getting to know Lightroom
• Working on images

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2007

• Old letters and journals typed
• Letters to Jo typed

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2006

• Scanning old photos
• Consolidating the blog in South America, combining separate photos
• Dad memories
• Mum and Jo memories on blog

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Cambridge life: 2004 - 2005

• Start Life Trove with blogger
• Start photography
• Ixus-i to start, then Canon Powershot for Canada
• Capturing memories into Excel and Mindmanager (to later become part of the blog)
• Picasa

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London years: 2000 - 2003

Life Trove conception

• Surfing blogs between work - the seed for starting Life Trove in 2004

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Old Mutual years: 1994 - 1999

• Keep 1996 & 1997 travel journal on PSION
• Send travel letters and post cards home
• Start collecting past memories in Udaipur
• Compass on PSION (Mission statement, quotes)

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People connected with

People connected with

• Mum, Jo, Mike, Matt (including affirmations)
• Trish, Keira
• Ally (tribute)
• Robyn, Ian, Carleen
• Russell
• Julian
• Jane Culley
• Sue, Michael (inheritance?)
• Liz, Srini, Gavin, Elna
• Aimee, Sharon, Shushann, Chris, Xenia, Jilly
• Eva
• Nicola
• Volvo: Caroline, Andreas, Charlie, Tony, Andrew
• School: Sean, Colin
• Hamish, Pooja
• Srini, Gavin, Rajesh

Inspired others to blog

• Eva
• Russell
• Jo
• Pooja
• Hamish (NZ guy)
• Mum write her memories

Wanted to

• Matt
• Liz
• Shushann
• Elna

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Stats

Stats

• 66 pages in 52 mins (Mermaid Pools) 42 pages in 33 mins
• 63 pages in 73 mins (Barrington Tops)
• 62 pages of blog in 70 mins. Another 32 pages in 45 mins.
• 43 pages in 80 mins (Facebook with Le Perouse)
• 24 pages in 70 mins (USA)
• 145 pages in 4 hours 6 minutes !!!
• Stranger 1 hour looking at Kruger, Pantanol and other travels. 25 pages.

Family and friends

• Chrisel in blog for an hour
• Matt in blog for 1 or 2 hrs when could not sleep.
• Mum looking back
• Elizabeth and blog. 140 mins, 40 pages. Poetry moved to tears (esp. The Child) Photos filled with hope, awe, wonder, all's right with world.

AI Podcast about Life Trove

I've just discovered the wonders of Notebook LM, an AI resource powered by Google's Gemini.

I gave it the URL of Life Trove and it created a wonderful, interactive podcast that provides some profound reflections on it. It's so wonderful, it had me close to tears at times. 

I particularly liked how it described my life as a combination of external adventure and internal introspection and how these two activities can create a virtuous circle. I'd never thought of it that way before but it resonates as beautifully true.

Listen to Podcast here

Life Trove progress: Nostalgia

I added a new label "nostalgia" with posts of things that make me nostalgic. E.g. Computer games, train set, stamp collecting, rugby world cup photos.

Life Trove progress: Technology through the years

I've added technology as a sidebar navigation and lots of posts and labels about new technology I've adopted through my life. I love technology to much. What a time to be alive!

See Technology

Life Trove: Spiritual diary overview now available as an editable Google sheet

It was previously an unwieldy Microsoft doc (set up in 2023).  

See Spiritual Diary

 

Life Trove progress: Adding Spiritual Journey and labels to the side navigation

 

Life Trove progress: Using Google custom maps for travels and city outings

I've started making extensive use of Google custom maps on Life Trove. Wonderful for showing my travels and city explorations. Previously I used it sparingly for research ahead of a trip (e.g. Cambodia).

Life Trove progress: Adding books read each year and favourite movies (with images)

Books by year

 

Favourite movies by year

Older versions of this blog

In May this year, my blog celebrated its 20th birthday. Blogging has been a wonderful journey. It is what inspired me to get into photography. It has also created a record of my life (3382 posts and counting!) as it unfolds, creating the ultimate digital scrapbook and a kind of gratitude journal to look back on with great satisfaction when I am old.

Yesterday, I found some old versions of this blog archived by The Internet Archive.  Very cool!  

See live versions from 2005 and 2007.

Nov 2004  (After 6 months of blogging)

Feb 2006 (After 9 months of blogging)

Nov 2007 (After 3 years of blogging)

After scanning the family photos

Can’t believe the amazing job you’ve done on collating all the family history on your blog! Thank you so much. I’ve spent a lovely snowy morning scrolling through them all. I’m certain I’ve never seen much of it and listening to Dad’s voice on tape was amazing. Hopefully it will be treasured by the next several generations. I know how much effort it took for Jill and I to come up with limited memoires.

Much love as always, Trish

Thanks Trish for your lovely email.

I had such fun going back over the old photo albums, going back over old memories, capturing it all. The older I get, the more precious it all seems. Getting intimate with Gran and Gramp's lives, for example, is a way to keep them alive. I'm haunted by the idea that inevitably one day we will all be completely forgotten, all our precious moments and experiences "lost, like tears in the rain."  Maybe my blog is a primal urge to delay that.  Irrespective of all that, I do love all the curating and recording, it makes me happy.  And I look forward to looking back on it all when I am old and grey and feeling grateful for the amazing life I've lived and the beautiful friends and family I got to share the journey of life with.

G

Life Trove progress: Life overview now available as an editable Google sheet)

 Previously it was an html table, finicky to edit.

See Life Overview

Life Trove progress: Adding Spotify playlist embeds

 Including nostalgic music for each decade of my life.

See Spotify Playlists

Fotojet Collage Maker

Picasa was discontinued so I needed to find another app to create my collages on Life Trove.  Fotojet has been a wonderful find.  It gives me far more control than Picasa in determining the layout and what photos show where.