things I remember
There are two obstacles to keeping a journal, as I see it. The first is maintaining the motivation to write. The second is deciding what to write. My usual journalling style eliminates these two obstacles by the simple expedient of only ever writing when there is something I absolutely have to either record or discuss with myself. The first difficulty being overcome because I have found that when there is something I absolutely must write about I have no lack of motivation to do so. The second is overcome even easier than the first because if there is something I absolutely must write about, I write about that, and thus my decision about what to write is made of its own accord. The downside is that there are often months at a time where no thought or situation attains quite that level of urgency. But no system is perfect, and as I like mine, I will stick to it.
When it comes to writing an autobiography - as I mentioned in an earlier post that I am doing - wholely new problems arise. Because now, rather than merely transcribing a stream of conciousness about an idea or circumstance, one is elevated from the role of a mere mental stenographer to the dually exalted stations of journalist and historian. One must give consideration to the public, and to posterity. What right do you then have to censor events just because you deem them unworthy of comment? To wait for inspiration to strike could be criminal neglect of the duty you have undertaken to relate the full course of your life. But nobody wants to read ten thousand pages of how well you slept and what you had for lunch, so how do you choose? Where do you draw the line? What is it permissible to filter? And opposite this question is a parallel one of even greater importance: what things are too important to include? Without a doubt there are things in my life that will never be known by more than two or three people - myself included - so how can I then put them in a book or even a pamphlet for who knows who in the world to read? But obviously those are some of the most important stories of my life and any history of me would be incomplete without them.
However, even with questions of boring details and things held in confidence aside, there are other matters to think of. The one of primary importance for me is that of humility, or rather, pride. There is a certain extent to which you can detail an account without losing much objectivity, but that kind of distance would kill an autobiography. When you really get into telling a story about your own life to people who weren't there, you have to tell them when you did something really great or did something from really great motives. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody at some point in their life has done something really good that other people, if they knew, would admire them for. Even I have been known, from time to time, to perform some selfless or otherwise remarkable act. But it's really incredibly difficult to write it so that a reader and an eyewitness would have the same opinion of me afterwards. I mean, I can't even write self-promoting cover letters when I apply for a job, how am I going to talk about something that I've done that's legitimately praiseworthy? I'll pass over the difficulty of representing one's faults and disgraces, that should be readily apparent to anyone.
I'm tired now, so I'm not going to think up any more problems with writing an autobiography. Instead I'm going to go to sleep, which I regard as a higher calling than either journalism or history. I really just wanted an excuse to use some grandiose language because I just finished reading the sequels to The Three Musketeers, which can be found here. But I think the question of what to include in a person's life story is an important one regardless of my using it as a pretext. I happened to think about a month or two ago that this is a time in my life that would get at most a paragraph in my biography, but I'm beginning to think that that would only be true if someone else wrote it. But seeing as how neither anyone else nor myself has written it yet, the question remains unanswered. If you can think of anything I have done in the last nine months worth more than a half dozen sentences, let me know and I will be sure to credit you when I get it published.
When it comes to writing an autobiography - as I mentioned in an earlier post that I am doing - wholely new problems arise. Because now, rather than merely transcribing a stream of conciousness about an idea or circumstance, one is elevated from the role of a mere mental stenographer to the dually exalted stations of journalist and historian. One must give consideration to the public, and to posterity. What right do you then have to censor events just because you deem them unworthy of comment? To wait for inspiration to strike could be criminal neglect of the duty you have undertaken to relate the full course of your life. But nobody wants to read ten thousand pages of how well you slept and what you had for lunch, so how do you choose? Where do you draw the line? What is it permissible to filter? And opposite this question is a parallel one of even greater importance: what things are too important to include? Without a doubt there are things in my life that will never be known by more than two or three people - myself included - so how can I then put them in a book or even a pamphlet for who knows who in the world to read? But obviously those are some of the most important stories of my life and any history of me would be incomplete without them.
However, even with questions of boring details and things held in confidence aside, there are other matters to think of. The one of primary importance for me is that of humility, or rather, pride. There is a certain extent to which you can detail an account without losing much objectivity, but that kind of distance would kill an autobiography. When you really get into telling a story about your own life to people who weren't there, you have to tell them when you did something really great or did something from really great motives. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody at some point in their life has done something really good that other people, if they knew, would admire them for. Even I have been known, from time to time, to perform some selfless or otherwise remarkable act. But it's really incredibly difficult to write it so that a reader and an eyewitness would have the same opinion of me afterwards. I mean, I can't even write self-promoting cover letters when I apply for a job, how am I going to talk about something that I've done that's legitimately praiseworthy? I'll pass over the difficulty of representing one's faults and disgraces, that should be readily apparent to anyone.
I'm tired now, so I'm not going to think up any more problems with writing an autobiography. Instead I'm going to go to sleep, which I regard as a higher calling than either journalism or history. I really just wanted an excuse to use some grandiose language because I just finished reading the sequels to The Three Musketeers, which can be found here. But I think the question of what to include in a person's life story is an important one regardless of my using it as a pretext. I happened to think about a month or two ago that this is a time in my life that would get at most a paragraph in my biography, but I'm beginning to think that that would only be true if someone else wrote it. But seeing as how neither anyone else nor myself has written it yet, the question remains unanswered. If you can think of anything I have done in the last nine months worth more than a half dozen sentences, let me know and I will be sure to credit you when I get it published.