Great Idea, But…

The other day I got this awesome idea to begin writing my autobiography. I was thinking of My Wholly Unremarkable Life as a title.

This was prompted in no small part by reaching the age where I really should start writing some of that shit down, lest it slip from my memory at some point in the future. While my dad retained all his mental faculties right till the end, my mom suffered with Alzheimer's, so I probably have a fifty percent chance of losing my mind at some point, and I'd really like to retain the written memories if nothing else. While the events themselves remain clear, with each passing year, pinpointing exactly when things happened gets a little bit fuzzier, and I know I'm in trouble when I look at my music collection and ask, "Was that 1978 or 1979?" (There was a time I could tell you which season songs were popular, but that is long gone.)

From late 1987 until my cancer diagnosis, I had been religiously keeping a journal of my life adventures. I can't stand to read through any of it at this point because it's painfully obvious from my own words what an asshole I was for the vast majority of my time in San Francisco—but it does come in handy when I'm faced with trying to recall exactly when something happened.

I gave up journaling with the cancer diagnosis. I didn't want to wallow in self-pity and be forced to read it after I came through the ordeal, and it just seemed like it was a perfect time to stop. I also thought that my budding blogging career would take up the slack, and in many respects it did—until I systematically deleted my blogs not once, or twice, but three times total. I wish I'd at least kept a backup of the most recent one (the one I wiped before moving to Denver), but alas…

We move forward.

Anyhow, I've tried to start writing down some of my experiences, but I'm finding it difficult. I start on one thing and before I know it I'm off on some tangent. But I'm not going to give up, even if it means "publishing" individual chapters here.

Stay tuned, and I'll try not to disappoint.

 

5 Replies to “Great Idea, But…”

  1. Yup. I'm 47, and things really start to blur. Big things: marriage, getting out of debt, those things ring out their years. But the year you got the new fridge? The big TV? When was "Will & Grace" on? What year was "Mambo Number 5?"

    I've been with my husband for 15 years, in the same house, mostly with the same cat, most of it with the same cars and same jobs. Untangling the 2000s is really, really tough.

  2. Please please write things down!
    As an amateur genealogist and an acolyte of history, the daily doings of people are what makes history and genealogy come alive. Simple day to day things, which the writer may think mawkish is exactly what future generations want to know and read.

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