There are sections of my past when there is a real lack of photos of me.

I think this mostly started in my mid-twenties when I started my own businesses, and basically worked non-stop.

This was also the time before smart phones and people taking endless photos of people doing, well, everything. Yes people had cameras, but they used film. Film was expensive. You used it carefully. When you used a roll you had to take it to a photo developing store or lab. Then you had to a wait a week. Then you had to go back to pick it up. It was a big investment of your time and money, so people took photos more prudently.

The good news was that there was great anticipation to see those photos when you finally got the film processed. Sometimes it was months since you’d taken the pictures. Of course there was always the downsides when the camera had malfunctioned, or you hadn’t loaded the film correctly, or the lighting was really bad. Today you take a photo, check it on your phone, and take another if it’s not perfect.

So on top of the tendency for people to take fewer photos in the ‘film’ era, I was usually in the office so wasn’t available for them anyway.

The good thing about family gatherings though, was that there was generally someone with a camera there taking photos.

So just to prove that I was in fact around during these seemingly missing decades of my life, I’m posting a few random photos of those years, mostly taken at Christmas with my nieces. These are my sister’s daughters who are now grown women, which doesn’t help how old I sometimes feel.

I’ll admit to having a slightly ‘sleepy’ look in the several of the photos. I don’t recall whether this was related to the hours I was working or the poor sleeping arrangements that one inevitably ends up with when you travel to someone else’s home on the holidays.

Oh well, with age comes wisdom. I’m even throwing in an image of me taken at a resort, so apparently I did get out of the office for a vacation once in a while.

John Wordsworth Christmas morning

John L Wordsworth random xmas photo

John L Wordsworth with a beard

John L Wordsworth on holiday at resort