For me the most amazing (and wonderful) effect I get from looking at my old images, are the memories that come rushing back. I have negatives in my archives dating to 1961, taken with our family's 616 Brownie on my grandfather's farm. The property is no longer in the family's hands and the farmhouse, dating to 1884, will be torn down in May or June next year to make way for, are you ready for it? an age care center and retirement village. So yes, a lifetime has passed, but the memories endure.
I have those old negatives in front of me now as I write this - eight 616 negatives taken on Verichrome Pan film and processed (likely with a Kodak Tri-Chem Pack or DK60A,which we all used back then) at the local pharmacy as I didn't set up my home darkroom before late 1962 - the contact prints disappeared long ago but the film endures. Three of those images are of my cousin flying down a snowy hill on his skis. He was 17 at the time I took them; he died a few months ago at age 77, we hadn't been in contact for some time but when I look at the negatives and the scans I've recently made of them, everything returns in my mind. It's how films works for me.
As for cameras, my thinking goes in circles here also. I still own and use a Rolleiflex TLR I bought in 1966. In the 1970s I moved into the Nikkormat range, initially FTNs, then ELs, finally FT2s. I bought the ELs new in and finally disposed of them last year , sold them at mate's rates prices to someone who is using them. I no longer have my original Nikkors as I tended to trade up, but I do own some I bought in the 1990s and still use now and then. Several other cameras in my 'arsenal' date to the 1980s and get used as and when time and inclination allows. In 2009 I moved over to digital and I use my digiNikons often, but they haven't the same meaning to me as my film cameras. I see this as entirely natural.
Let's not go into those cameras I bought into but sold out of over the years - Leica Ms (I still miss them), Hasselblads (good riddance to the lot) and other superb makes I didn't bond with and I wasn't at all fussed to see them go. All sold and moved on.
M travel photos were fun to take and I've sold a fair few of them, back in the days when such images could find markets. Now they sit in their respective boxes or folders or hard disks, now and then I look at them and sigh but that's about it. The best were those I shot in Asia in 1970, each and every one of those mean a lot to me. I've kept all my old selfies and cat and dog shots - even a color portrait taken of me in 1954, which has somehow survived almost seven decades without any fading or even color shift. Family photos (two spouses, two stepsons) were all given to their respective subjects, who treasure them. I shot thousands but have kept maybe 20.
So yes, I have too many memories, but I try to not let them clutter up my brain too much. Still, I enjoy looking at those old images, even if only as contact proofs on one of my scanners plugged into my laptop or PC. Time-travel...
Like Dogman said (#65(, it really doesn't matter. I've lived a long life (I turned 74 a few days ago), and to me many things in life no longer matter very much and some things don't matter at all, however they affected me at the time when they happened. Time passes and everything changes. My goal now is not so much to have a long life as I know I haven't that left, but to have a good life. My photography continues to enhance my time here and this is why I go on taking photographs, even of things I've taken often over the years.
That's me, it's my life, they are my cameras and the images I've made with them. That's all...
NB I did enjoy seeing an old Roger Hicks thread revived - he had the rare ability to write in a way that made us think about many basic things, at times uncomfortably - he and his late spouse, Frances Schulz are still greatly missed by many.
