Backtagging
I'm trying to tag all of my old entries. Because this can be described as nothing more than "horrifying" using livejournal's interface, I'm using boutell's Tags from 10,000 Feet, which does pretty much exactly what I need.
It has the weird side effect of going back in time.
I started this journal six years ago because I'd been out sick for a while and I wanted to track where I was with it. The days were blurring together because I didn't have the structure that work put on my life. (Even my work structure was pretty arbitrary and wonky because of all of the late nights.) I had a lot of friends on livejournal, and it was easy and free to open an account, so I started here.
What I was trying to do: Put markers on the days. Track my health because it was too complicated for me to keep in my head after I got sick.
What actually emerged:
Community. The friends list on livejournal is a very powerful thing. When they added RSS syndication it also allowed me to keep track of friends outside of livejournal. For a while I was also maintaining several reading lists for fun and other uses, but most of those are off in lonely unread filters now. My core livejournal experience has been and continues to be people I know, usually in person but sometimes online. Being able to comment and receive comments has probably been the key that keeps me writing, even though the reasons for my journal continue to be the same: tracking and self-accountability. It seems a bit paradoxical to me, but I don't think I would want to write a journal that is really for me to keep track of myself if it weren't linked to other people's journals so I could read about what's happening with them. This is why blogs weren't ever very appealing to me: they're not interlinked enough; they're too one-way.
History. When I started this journal, I was disabled and didn't know it yet. I had to work very hard to realize it. I don't like being disabled at all, but I have to know it to be able to work with it and around it. I'm still hoping to get well again, but now I know that it isn't something that will just happen. Time will not fix me; I can still hope for new approaches and therapies. This is the elephant in the bedroom: it imposes so much on my life that it fills most of the space in my posts, and that's actually an accurate reflection. It took over my life in 2001 and it's still the major component in my life. Managing my health enough to be able to do anything at all takes most of my energy. Backtagging gives me the luxury of seeing large arcs. I can identify the periods of time when I was being a lab rat, trying out a new therapy, and see how it worked.
It's kind of funny to read an entry where I ate wheat and then write about feeling yucky after. Yeah... I wonder why that might be? I also started having a lot of problems with dairy in that phase, so I kept blaming the dairy. The dairy problems mostly cleared up after I stopped eating gluten. The dietary issues have been really subtle throughout.
It feels odd that other things are almost interstitial. Almost every post tracks my state that day, or what I was eating in an attempt to identify triggers. Other interests such as reading, gaming, painting miniatures, etc. are sort of tucked in around the edges. That's kind of the shape of my life now. I sometimes wonder if I'd stop writing if I got well again. Or am I in the habit now? I don't see myself as a writer, though I wouldn't mind becoming more disciplined in my writing. Without the need to record things too complicated to remember, would I stop recording anything at all?
It's going to take me a long time to finish this, if I finish it at all. But it seems possible with this software.
It has the weird side effect of going back in time.
I started this journal six years ago because I'd been out sick for a while and I wanted to track where I was with it. The days were blurring together because I didn't have the structure that work put on my life. (Even my work structure was pretty arbitrary and wonky because of all of the late nights.) I had a lot of friends on livejournal, and it was easy and free to open an account, so I started here.
What I was trying to do: Put markers on the days. Track my health because it was too complicated for me to keep in my head after I got sick.
What actually emerged:
Community. The friends list on livejournal is a very powerful thing. When they added RSS syndication it also allowed me to keep track of friends outside of livejournal. For a while I was also maintaining several reading lists for fun and other uses, but most of those are off in lonely unread filters now. My core livejournal experience has been and continues to be people I know, usually in person but sometimes online. Being able to comment and receive comments has probably been the key that keeps me writing, even though the reasons for my journal continue to be the same: tracking and self-accountability. It seems a bit paradoxical to me, but I don't think I would want to write a journal that is really for me to keep track of myself if it weren't linked to other people's journals so I could read about what's happening with them. This is why blogs weren't ever very appealing to me: they're not interlinked enough; they're too one-way.
History. When I started this journal, I was disabled and didn't know it yet. I had to work very hard to realize it. I don't like being disabled at all, but I have to know it to be able to work with it and around it. I'm still hoping to get well again, but now I know that it isn't something that will just happen. Time will not fix me; I can still hope for new approaches and therapies. This is the elephant in the bedroom: it imposes so much on my life that it fills most of the space in my posts, and that's actually an accurate reflection. It took over my life in 2001 and it's still the major component in my life. Managing my health enough to be able to do anything at all takes most of my energy. Backtagging gives me the luxury of seeing large arcs. I can identify the periods of time when I was being a lab rat, trying out a new therapy, and see how it worked.
It's kind of funny to read an entry where I ate wheat and then write about feeling yucky after. Yeah... I wonder why that might be? I also started having a lot of problems with dairy in that phase, so I kept blaming the dairy. The dairy problems mostly cleared up after I stopped eating gluten. The dietary issues have been really subtle throughout.
It feels odd that other things are almost interstitial. Almost every post tracks my state that day, or what I was eating in an attempt to identify triggers. Other interests such as reading, gaming, painting miniatures, etc. are sort of tucked in around the edges. That's kind of the shape of my life now. I sometimes wonder if I'd stop writing if I got well again. Or am I in the habit now? I don't see myself as a writer, though I wouldn't mind becoming more disciplined in my writing. Without the need to record things too complicated to remember, would I stop recording anything at all?
It's going to take me a long time to finish this, if I finish it at all. But it seems possible with this software.