Eons' LifeMap lets you create a visual story of your life in photos and text. Document where you've been, remember the people who meant the most to you, trace how the big events of history have affected you -- and then share your story with the people you choose.
To help you get started, four LifeMap users who've made their LifeMaps public told us about their experiences:
Eons user: swcrowe
First I said, "Okay. If I could take ten photos of my life, what would they be?" And that would help to whittle it down, but I wound up with a lot more than ten. But at least I started with that. I tried to find some early photos that my mother had saved, so I've got one of those up. I didn't take my baby picture, but I took one with just my brother and me when I was pretty young.
And the nice thing about the life map is that it divides up the events. I didn't realize this until I had done it, that you start off by putting your birth. That goes on automatically. Then you put other births. I had all my brothers plotted. I had my two sons and their births plotted. And then later on I looked at the life map and found now that all the births have that little stork.
So that icon is all along the top row, all the way across, so you see all the births lined up like that. The same thing happened with anything that had to do with education or learning. All those events came across with the graduation cap. So it organizes it for you. It was kind of cool. I didn't expect that.
I've shown it to my wife and a couple of colleagues. It'll be nice when it finally is at a point where I can send it off to someone who I knew in my childhood.
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Eons user: RiReg
I think I've had a very interesting life, and I like to look back on it and sort of see what I've done. And actually, it was really interesting to see how things that I felt were important fell into the different categories. While I'm at work, I think about my work stuff. While I'm at home, I think about my family stuff. When I'm planning a trip, I think about my travel stuff. So all of a sudden, it sort of becomes the collage that it really is. On the life map, you can actually see it - like to see each of the events in a line, by category. I love it.
It's a couple of things. One is really an aid to look back and as you say, "Oh, I'm gonna do the travel things." And I would start to work on the travel things, and then I'd remember, "Oh, well, that was right after Bob and I started dating." So I'd put in that date. And then, "Oh, well, we got married on such day." So it's sort of a memory trigger mechanism.
About a year ago, I was talking to my mom about her life. And I said, "Let's write it down, let's put together a list." So I sort of interviewed her. And every single thing she talked about was, "I went to this school, and then I went to this school, and then I went to...."
And I'm thinking this is really boring, and I know you had this incredible life. But you need to figure out what are all of the different types of interesting things, not just what school you went to. And this does that. It's amazing.
I've shared it with my family so far, my husband and my son and daughter-in-law. I'm getting together with my sister in New Orleans over December, and we'll be sharing it with them. And as I fill out more of it, when I add my friends to it, I'll share it with my friends. You want them to see that they're an important part of your life. It adds to that element of filling out your life map and sharing the information.
Obviously, my family is really important to me, so I have a lot of family things in there. I've got all of my brothers and sisters birthdays in there, and I'm gonna be adding my dad's. He was born in Bogota in Colombia. And I have the manifest from the ship that his family came to the U.S. on that's got their names on it and everything, so I'm gonna add that.
But it's also important to see the vacations because I've traveled all over the world.
And also my accomplishments, the jumping out of airplanes and hang gliding, and, you know, the crazy things that I've done in my life that really give a flavor of my personality. All together it tells this interesting story.
And you could almost see writing a book. From each of these things you could put together a story that you could share with your family.
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Eons user: ReedSturtevant
I thought it would be fun to have something at a glance that reminds me of where I've been and what I've done and how it all fits together. It's so hard to keep that in mind, day to day..
For me it starts from the photos. I have a lot of pictures from all different parts, times in my life. And so I would start with the pictures. Sometimes they have become a stand-in for the memories, so here I have been able to string those together.
I always think of my life as having a set of threads, whether it's family, or growing up, or the places I've lived, and the things that I've done, work wise, hobby wise. So I'll try to find enough about one thread to make that work. I don't think of myself as enough of a storyteller to have it be a real story with a beginning and an end.
I think there are transitions, so leaving home, getting married, having a child. I think there are things - markers during my life around my family. My brother passed away when he was 30, and that's an event that I would build around.
When I left school - I dropped out of school at 17 and started working, I think that was a big transition point. As I mentioned, getting married and settling down in the house we're still in now. I think there are particular points that were really major changes that I would pick up on.
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Eons user: dougwintz
I think when you get to be 50 there's a certain degree of taking stock of your life to date. If you are fortunate, you're at the midway point.
And so, for me, it was a little bit about, well, what have I done in the past? Have I done the things that I wanted to do in my life, and if I haven't, what do I want to accomplish later? There's a little bit of self-evaluation that's involved in putting the life map together. You're evaluating your life; your accomplishments, the things that you've done, and at the same time, thinking about what are the things that I look forward to doing over the next 50 years.
I like the photos. I like the aspect of documenting -It's like a family album that you can keep online. But with most family albums, the pictures are scattered all over the place. This gives you the opportunity to create an interactive photo album of your family or your life, and you can see it all in one place.
I've always liked to do a lot of different things. I've always wanted to be involved in the Arts and family and intellectual pursuit and career and sports. I feel somewhat validated in what I've wanted to do up until now, and the LifeMap validates this and helps me point the direction of what I should be doing later in life.
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