Dear Diary, Today I Threw Up
Posted on | August 30, 2007 at 10:03 pm | 2 Comments
Yes, I’m still kicking.
Contrary to the impression that the recent dearth of writing on this site gives, my big secret is that I have actually been blogging every single day since April 17th. I just haven’t been posting the entries. And, okay, it’s not really “blogging” so much as “journaling”. As an experiment, I’ve been using the Daily Journal feature of DateBk6 on my Palm T|X PDA to record the day’s events every day as they happen. Granted, the entries are not really like real blog entries, and there’s no way I’d post them online. But it still takes some amount of discipline, some might say “obsessiveness”, to do it. The tone of those entries are much more objective than blog entries. I tend to keep my opinions out of it, aside from things like “Dad is looking worse today” or “my sister is mad at me”. Most entries are along the lines of “Got up at x:xx am, usual routine, arvd work x:xx am, had blah-blah for lunch” etc. In other words, they are deathly dull to anyone but me.
But interspersed with the mundane details of my daily routine are transcripts of phone conversations and dealings I’ve had with people about my dad and his financial and health issues. A caregiver’s work is never done. I’ve found this to be very helpful, as it gives me something to refer back to when I’m being questioned or if there’s a problem. “According to my notes, on May 24th, CSR Trudi told me that all the necessary paperwork had been submitted.” I’ve come to rely on this more and more, even though I maybe should just be adding these notes to the individual contact entries instead. It’s easier to just stick them into one place though, and the journal entries are easily searchable. It’s also shown me how much time I actually spend keeping my dad’s affairs in order.
The entries are also useful for trying to figure out what it was I ate that gave me food poisoning. I’m amazed at how quickly I forget what it was I consumed yesterday. I’m also amazed at how often I look back at old entries to see what I did that day. So there is some amount of usefulness outside of the compulsiveness.
Since I never quite got the hang of the Graffiti 2 handwriting recognition on the T|X, and it’s time consuming and un-ergonomic to use the onscreen virtual keyboard, I’ve been mostly using a wireless keyboard to type these entries. Initially I used the regular Palm Universal Wireless Keyboard that works via the infrared connection, but that gave out pretty fast and some keys stopped working. So I bought the Bluetooth version of the keyboard which works a lot better, though the driver does cause some other things on the T|X to mess up from time to time. Both keyboards fold up nicely and aren’t that much bigger than the PDA itself, yet are easy to type quickly on, once you get used to them.
Anyway, my point is, even though I haven’t been blogging this summer, I have been writing. I’ve been honing my journaling chops, which admittedly can’t really be applied to blogging and aren’t useful for anything else. But hey, it’s a time waster.
So, be assured that even if I’m not posting here everyday, I’m at least “blogging” somewhere. Is anyone else out there afflicted with this particular compulsion?
But why haven’t I been blogging here these past few months, aside from a few sporadic posts? I dunno. Just got out of the habit, I guess.
Has anything exciting happened to me during that time? I dunno. I suppose if it has, you’ll be reading about it here in future entries. Assuming I can get back in the habit, that is. And that I have some record of what I did during that time. Oh wait, I guess I do.
BTW, on Tues, April 24th, 2007, I had Spicy Pollo Sonora from Blue Bonnet for lunch. I also had an unusually long commute to work that day (35 minutes) because of rain. Dinner was leftover Chinese. And I woke up at 5:25am and went to bed at approx 11pm.
Pet Peeve Of The Day: People who misspell “arctic” as “artic”. I shouldn’t get too peeved – until recently, I was one of those people. Thank you, melting ice caps and faddish British band.
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “Dear Diary, Today I Threw Up”
August 31st, 2007 @ 12:48 am
So I’m detecting this kind of Zen-koan tone to this post — on the order of the sound-the-tree-falling-in-the-forest-makes. To wit: if a person writes diary entries to a Palm / iPhone / Molskine, is it truly blogging? I think: Not.
But this “compulsion” you complain about does have a term — it makes you a “Diarist”. See, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys
who took the act to a level unparalleled in history.
Which of course no one can match, particularly 300 years after Pepys in an age that doesn’t exactly place a great deal of emphasis on literacy. However, its interesting to note that tension existed 200 years ago in Lewis and Clark. Lewis was the philosophical one, while Clark was in the more staccato, “compulsive” mode that you ascribe to yourself. However, the full color and flavor of the journey couldn’t have been constructed without both styles.
Anyway, its good to see you back — I was getting a bit concerned that this blog might go completely fallow.
August 31st, 2007 @ 8:17 am
I’ve kept a sort of journal on computer since roughly Xmas of ‘94, but I don’t know if you call it a ‘compulsion’ since I still view it as a necessary chore rather than a pleasure or a ritual. But it’s very handy for ordinary recordkeeping of the sorts of things you don’t realize at the time you’ll need to keep track of, plus stories from parties or vacations that you can come back later on and reread. And since I’ve been doing it so long now, I can play the “what was I doing 10 years ago tonight?” game – as it turns out, one of the things that happened on September 1st 1997 was: getting an Email from longtime correspondant Rogj…
As for me, in the past month I’ve moved to another hemisphere, landed my first 9-5 job in over 8 years and seen my son take his first steps. But you won’t see me blogging about any of it – take THAT, posterity!!! In your face, woooo!