A to Z Theme 2016

For my 2016 A to Z theme I used a meme that I ran across on the blog of Bridget Straub who first saw it on the blog of Paula Acton. This meme is a natural for me to use on my memoir blog. It's an A to Z concept and it's about me. No research and nothing complicated. I'm given twenty six questions or topics to discuss that are about me.

In April I kept my posts short and uncomplicated. In the midst of it all you might learn a few things about me that you didn't previously know.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Deja Vu: Remembering the Past



        The Deja Vu Blogfest has become an annual event hosted by D.L. Hammons.   This is the time when bloggers can rerun a neglected or favorite blogpost from the previous year in hopes that more will see it.  In the case of Wrote By Rote I also have an opportunity to try to reach more people who might not be familiar with my memoir blog.   I hope you enjoy today's look back and that you will return to read future posts.  My regular posting schedule for this blog is each Saturday.










Tee and Cara   "Keeping Track"  (1968)

     --a note about the music:  Tee and Cara's As They Are is one of my favorite albums.  Sadly it did not gain the recognition it deserved although I guess it now has a minor cult status.  I hope you will give it a listen.  I was tempted to use every song on it in my A to Z series.





Keeping Track of Time

         I've always thought about keeping a diary.  Those historical records like the diary of Samuel Pepys who famously chronicled London life in the 1600's fired my imagination when I read excerpts in high school. Anne Frank's diary has inspired many with her harrowing story of living in hiding from the Nazis.  Many movies and literary works have used the diary as a device for telling a story.   Keeping track of the events in my life in written form has often been something that I felt that I should do.

        Yet, I never seemed to be able to keep up a momentum to maintain an ongoing  record of my life.  I would sometimes start.  I'd get a journal or composition book having all the best of intent to faithfully start a diary.  Then after an entry or two I'd forget to write in it, eventually stopping altogether and stuffing the diary in a drawer.

        During my senior year of high school and into my first year of college I faithfully kept a dream diary.  I recorded my dreams in great detail and still have those notebooks to this day.   But that was not exactly my real life.  What happened during my waking hours is now mostly hazy memories if remembered at all.

        Life journal entries are something I tend to start writing when I'm depressed or when some negative event is hanging over me.  During my separations from my first and second wives I wrote a lot.  Sometimes I'd write about my days or I'd write about my feelings.   There were many songs and poems inspired by my hurt and sadness.  I suppose my creative writing qualifies as a form of journaling since I was digging from the depth of my emotions.

          In the summer of 1971 I embarked on what was to be a grand hitchhiking tour across the United States.   Each day I recorded in detail the aspects of my adventure and my impressions of the places that I had been.  There were many pages of writing for this journey that was cut short to a mere month of travel as opposed to several months.   A decade later a briefcase that contained this journal and many other writings was stolen when someone broke into my van in the Holiday Inn parking lot in Greeley, Colorado.  My grandest attempt at journaling probably ended up in a dumpster somewhere with many details of my memory gone with it.

          Like prayer, journaling is something I tend to do more of in times when I'm downcast.   I'm better with prayer since it's easier to say a quick "thank-you" now and then.  Writing takes more effort and time.  When I'm having happy times or good times there is little time for writing about it all.   Time just flies by pleasantly and usually the things I have to show for those experiences are of the nature of photographs or souvenir mementoes related to whatever I was doing at those times.

           Hurt and sadness gnaws long and agonizingly on the heart, mind, and soul.  Those are the times when you have to tell somebody what you're feeling and often that someone is yourself.  I've often turned to writing to sort out my feelings.  Somehow maybe I can find answers by writing.   Or at very least express my frustration or even rage.   Happy times often don't permit writing and pondering.  These are the times to live in the moment and hope to remember the experience.

           Keeping track of time can be tedious, meticulous, and self-indulging.   Or at other times keeping track of time can be quickly scribbled notes that are lost or unintelligible if not expounded upon quickly.  Time goes faster than any of us can adequately ever keep track of.     I suppose if I kept track of all the time in my life I wouldn't be doing that much actual living.

            Do you keep a journal of your life events?    Did you ever faithfully keep a diary in your past?   How do you think journaling life events can help you or others?

27 comments:

  1. I've always journalled over the years. I still have some of my teen ones somewhere in the loft. The reason I started both scrapbooking and blogging was to record my life for both myself (when I get too senile to remember!) and for future generations :) x

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    1. When I was younger I thought that I'd remember everything about my life. I was very wrong about that.

      Lee

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  2. That's one thing I would do if I could go back and make a suggestion to myself...is journal. There are so many memories that are so fuzzy and/or mixed together, that I would give anything to know what really took place.

    I'd also like to get a sense of what my emotional state was like when I made some of my decisions. Time can have a way of distorting that.

    Excellent re-post!

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    1. The details of life are easily forgotten. I get an overview in memory but it's difficult to pinpoint everything.

      Lee

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  3. What a terrible loss, to have those diaries stolen. I started keeping a diary on 1/1/77, in 7th grade. I kept it up till mid-2009, which was such a horrible year that I wrote in huge letters in my journal, '2009 SUCKS!!!! I'm not writing again till something good happens'. By the time something good happened, I ended up with writers cramp trying to catch up on 2 years' worth of stuff that happened. I gave up trying to catch up sometime in 2012. It's just faster to type.

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    1. I rarely write by hand anymore. In fact my hand writing has become very bad through lack of practice.

      Lee

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  4. Excellent revived post!

    I've never even heard of Tee and Cara -- but I enjoyed the track.

    I've always thought of journalling, but have only done it for short stretches from time to time. I think it's useful. Sorry you lost those journals in the 80's!

    Happy Deja Vu!

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    1. I wish I had known the value of journaling when I was younger, but who things of such things when they are so busy with life. My memory is often an unreliable witness to the past.

      Lee

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  5. Journaling is important to history.

    Have a great Christmas!!!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Now you tell me! I have betrayed historical perspective.

      You have a great Christmas as well.

      Lee

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  6. Oh boy, that really sucks about your van getting broke into and your trip memories stolen. I can imagine how much you would love to have those notes from 1971. That was a good year indeed! I used to journal a bit but I find I'm not very consistent with it. I tried to do Morning Pages every day but that didn't work out...mostly because I'm not a morning person! I think of blogging as keeping track of time and that's about all I do as far as journaling goes nowadays.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I wish I could be more consistent with such things as journaling. I admire those who keep a good record of their lives.

      Lee

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  7. I love this. I used to keep a diary. It was pink with a cute Dalmatian on the cover. I still journal certain things, as it serves as a reminder of the good, a warning not to repeat the bad, and overall it makes me smile :)

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    1. Smiles and melancholy thoughts--journal entries can be great triggers for those.

      Lee

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  8. Hi Lee - glad to see you around again .. and those memories lost - I feel for you there ...

    I've never journalled as such .. but wish I'd written about a few episodes in my life ... I started writing detailed letters of times in South Africa .. but earlier ones would be good to have ..

    With thoughts - Hilary

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I guess you could always go back to record your memories of those times based on what you can dredge up from the recesses of your mind. That's better than nothing I'd say.

      Lee

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  9. I've never tried a Dream Diary, but it's a super idea. You're lucky you started writing your experiences down when you were young. What a repository of things to recall.

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    1. Thank goodness I still have my dream diaries. I don't know how overtly accurate in the historical sense. They probably require a good bit of deciphering with a liberal dose of conjecture.

      Lee

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  10. Oh, so awful to have precious items stolen - especially those having no value whatsoever to the person who took them.
    The diary reminded me of my daughter's diary that she had begun in second grade - and then erased! - to start over two years later. I was so sad! All that precious writing and those memories - gone. She said it wasn't very good, because she wasn't very old when she wrote it. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. When the concrete evidence of the past is gone then we see life through the lacy clouds of sometimes dubious memory.

      Lee

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  11. When I went back to college, after my kids were in school, I took a class that required keeping a daily journal. I thought it was a pain at the time but when I found it a couple decades later, the insight it offered into the person I was back then and the memories it gave back to me made me wish I'd stayed with it long after the class was over.

    I'm sorry your journal was lost to you.

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    1. I think the point of the journaling is the diligence required to persist at it. Doing it until it is a habit is probably the right way to do it.

      Lee

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  12. Nothing is real until it is written: Virginia Woolff. Well I don't know for sure if that is true but there is value in journalling .. it makes things clearer, sharper. One becomes more aware of one's own hidden agenda about things ... and much more besides ..

    ReplyDelete
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    1. What you say makes me want to start keeping a daily journal. Blogging almost does it for me though not in the personal sense of recording my everyday thoughts, actions, and feelings.

      Lee

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  13. What a perfect deja vu post! I've never kept a journal or any form of diary, but your post has made me think. My public diary would be a combination of facebook and blog, but for that very reason they don't contain my most private thoughts, memories, or dreams.

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    1. Probably not the wisest thing to put up on social media, our private lives are best left to ourselves or historians after we've passed on.

      Lee

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    2. i'm not write my past in my diary. cause i'm not have that.

      But, i still remembered my past, in my mind. i hope, my future much better...

      Delete

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