Saturday, June 12, 2004
Memories
Now that my library is moved, I've been working on the papers I've been lugging around for years. One class is autobiographical source material. I tend to keep more of that than is strictly necessary, but it tends to help me recall specifics about events and people I would have otherwise forgotten. Every once in a while I go through and try to winnow or sort it. I've sketched an autobiographical outline three or four times, but it's never been a top priority and there's no time for it now.
Another class is notebooks. I'm not sure when I began keeping and carrying around spiral notebooks that I filled with various ideas for the ideas and projects I was working on. I don't throw those away; when I fill them up or lose track of one, I start another. I've accumulated dozens of them, and unlike my diarizing, most of these aren't dated. They tend to overlap, and I would have to give approximate dates from the context.
Then there is other reference material; potentially useful information that's not easily replaceable. Most of this stuff is partly sorted, but "partly" means that a lot of things that should belong together are scattered in various different places. Condensing them isn't quite as formidable a task as I have feared, but I have a target date to meet, and I'd rather not have it slip too much. But all this has to get left behind for me to pick up again later, I hope.
Not that this has much to do with travel except to the extent that life is a journey: Looking at where I've been is a useful exercise in deciding where I am now, where I want to be going, and what I need to get there.
Another class is notebooks. I'm not sure when I began keeping and carrying around spiral notebooks that I filled with various ideas for the ideas and projects I was working on. I don't throw those away; when I fill them up or lose track of one, I start another. I've accumulated dozens of them, and unlike my diarizing, most of these aren't dated. They tend to overlap, and I would have to give approximate dates from the context.
Then there is other reference material; potentially useful information that's not easily replaceable. Most of this stuff is partly sorted, but "partly" means that a lot of things that should belong together are scattered in various different places. Condensing them isn't quite as formidable a task as I have feared, but I have a target date to meet, and I'd rather not have it slip too much. But all this has to get left behind for me to pick up again later, I hope.
Not that this has much to do with travel except to the extent that life is a journey: Looking at where I've been is a useful exercise in deciding where I am now, where I want to be going, and what I need to get there.
