To Date or Not to Date

I'm not sure how many artists find value in dating their artwork. As for me, I haven't given it much thought in the last 10 or so years. I just sign my initials and that's it. But last night, I was going through some old portfolios, and I found a multitude of paintings I did with my watercolor instructor as a kid. Hardly any of them were dated except for one in 1981. I guessed that that put the rest of them at around the same time period. But then I started turning them over. And I found more work I did, but I knew I was older. The subject matter was more personal and the drawing skill was different. I could only guess that I did those in junior high or high school. But I will never know for sure! Now the OCD in me wants to rifle through all of my artwork and date the ones I can remember. But then the artist in me doesn't really care – it was done by me, it doesn't matter when. Oh well. Perhaps I should look at it this way: it's important to me right now because I'm just curious as to when in my life I created a particular piece of art. More than likely, it's not important to anyone else. In the meantime, here is one of those mystery pieces. I don't remember painting half the stuff I found, but I really don't remember EVER drawing anything from "E.T." but here's an "E.T." watercolor I did. That's the other thing that troubles me - why don't I remember doing this? Anyway, since most of the work I found was probably done around '81-'82, I would guess this one was done later. "E.T." came out in '82, so I would venture to guess this was done in that year or '83. But since there were other pieces in the portfolio that looked like they were from my early teens, it's a possibility that I did this in junior high or high school. I'll leave that up to you.