The story of my life?

CAPTURING THE PAST

Since the start of 1975 I've  endeavored to keep a daily diary, writing a few mundane lines about my day, and  the occasional comment on my state of mind or the wider world.  That's over 42 years worth of trivia, and still going.  There are a few gaps along the way, the longest of about six months, but there is, or rather was, a physical book for each calendar year.

That takes up quite a bit of space, for something that gets consulted only on rare occasions.  So when we started to think about downsizing, which resulted in our move to our current home, this mountain of paper looked a likely candidate for culling.  Except that that's my past life, since I was in the dying days of my teenage years, and does have a certain amount of interest and, very occasionally, some practical use as I try to pinpoint events in the past.  So I took a decision that comes with both positive and negative consequences.  I would data capture the entries into the digital world, and thereby discard the pile of books.  But over four and a bit decades I do seem to have poured out a lot of words....

At least I have an end point to aim for.  When I started on this path, in early 2014, it seemed sensible to also digitise each new day's entry as I went along.  And to capture the earlier months of that year so that it was complete.  So everything from 1 January 2014 is present and correct.  Progress at the other end is less encouraging though.

There have been spells when I've neglected the task, so the momentum has been far from linear.  Recently I decided to sit down and work out, roughly, how long the project might take.  At the rate of progress I'd managed up until that point I'd be around 80 when I finished.  I might not live to 80.

A few calculations suggest that to be finished around the time I turn seventy I'm going to have to type up around five to six entries per day.  With some entries being no more than a brief paragraph, whilst others can cover two or more pages of A4 in tightly packed script, that isn't a very meaningful measurement.  It's not helped by the appalling handwriting, which can require a bit of textual detective work to interpret at times.  If I had any sense I'd stop now.

Except that I did mention that there were also positive outcomes to this exercise (as well as the glacially slow reduction in the pile).  A cliche I know, but as we go through life we do become different people in many ways, but also retain some essential elements of our personality.  Wading through my daily existence from all that time ago is like reading a novel in which I am the central character, but only partially sketched out, and I'm left to try and fill in the holes.  It often feels like somebody else's life entirely when I come across incidents and people that trigger no memories at all.  Yet others seem so fresh in my mind and I'm instantly returned to the moment.  It's an interesting education in the selectivity of memory.

At the moment I'm only in 1980, in the earliest days of my career, gradually recovering from the most serious illness I've ever had, and making some friendships that have continued over the years since.  I know that there were some big upheavals in my life in the months I'm now entering, but how the words on the page will relate to my recall is going to be interesting.  My current life feels so sorted and contented that I'm not going to encounter anything that could disturb my equilibrium.  And there are many events still to look forward to as I type my way through each day.

So it might take me another decade (and then some), but this is one project I'm not giving up on.