Historiography is the study of the discipline of history, or how people record and come to understand history. It is pertinent to note that newspapers and others have taken to making decade retrospectives these past few weeks. They are justified in doing so, but their limits reveal their selection. Obviously, George W Bush’s administration dominates the American decade and how it is reported reveals volumes about the author in question. Similarly, a primary focus on American events (again acknowledging space limitations) speaks to a limited view. Any representative memoir for the Ones would need to at least touch on more of the dynamic events that occurred.

In that vein, I will avoid the format my host favors: a chronology. I am incapable of producing one because I have stopped making useful notes. This suggests an existential query, how will anyone know I was alive this year at all? From here, I will chide myself with the scant evidence I have produced in this ninth year of the second millennium in Anno Domini.

The candidates I most wanted to rely on are ‘newsworthy’ text files that, ideally, I take notes during the entire week on. When I first began the practice last year, I made the lazy error of only recording the week number. This year, I had only a short reprieve because at week fourteen, year nine and eight would only be distinguished by internal context and Microsoft’s valuable metadata. I opted for ‘9 week 5,’ so the whole year comes in sequence. I confront the annoyance of a more complex naming scheme in another type of record that should be ‘9 12 29’ but I only thought of that just now. Otherwise, I have been using my favored notation – European, 29 12 9 – which causes all sorts of problems with Sorts. As much as I cringe at all the retyping this involves, I can not shirk the superior organization.

The weekly notes feature some different styles of organization as well. Each mostly indicates the amount of time devoted. Sometimes, though, I wrote them on Sunday so it became a struggle to remember what happened on Monday and if it was actually during the other weekend. The task was harder when I didn’t have an externally enforced schedule to segment my days. The current vacation feels like the eternal present, although I have exacerbated it with sleep arrhythmia.

The most common form is a mass of keywords representing events, what I finished reading, what I have watched, and only occasionally some thoughts about events. The better formed files have two more lines. One notes the books I am currently reading, even if only distractedly. The other notes significant websites I visited. All too often, I only noted the newgrounds games and movies I liked. An example, 9 week 31:

The March, another sleep fouling morning and afternoon, Marta’s last ruination, Monica’s friend watches Who Framed then Big Fish, I started 1919 from wikipedia, I officially give up on the Everyman schedule for two months now, Uumpect, cat jumped on my face at night, I admitted I’m a potential bug eater, credit card finds monica at our forward base, NOD32 upgrade, I missed the Colony but Sat 8am, cd testing again, papi gave me Tata’s opener at last, car inner light dimmer switch, finally replied on mafia boring, I need to sinning register, W and rejected commentary, Miriam, Celi beat back her lymph cancer, Fables: Storybook Love, downloaded itunes podcasts, yank, I bought it all finally, she put my registration in my glove compartment, dvr means colony ep 2, carwash, bike ride & carlos offers ticket, genius bar & sears, IRA vs Taliban, Brad arrives, colony and californication finally, Sun Quincineiera 5,00pm past la palma?

So what does any of that mean?

I finished reading E L Doctorow’s The March.

I had decided to practice the ‘Everyman’ sleep schedule but kept it poorly. I didn’t take my naps at the same time every day, making the transition increasingly difficult. As noted four later, I decided to give up. Unfortunately, the author I consulted suggested two months of dutiful, normal sleep before trying again. By the time the opportunity came, school made it neigh impossible to have breaks that also jived with workdays. (I fully intend to document my experience, yet twenty weeks have elapsed.)

Some friend of Monica, name unknown and now gender unknown, came and watched movies.

I took notes about what occurred during 1919, intending to make an Everything2 article about it.

On Facebook’s D&D Tiny Adventures, I created Uumpect, a genasai warrior whose name parodies the font Impact.

I hadn’t started sleeping (and spending virtually the whole day) with my door closed yet, so Monica’s cat jumped on my face.

I published “The other, other right meat.” I’d link to it, but it’s a few posts below, so you can find my radical liberal environmentalist sentiment.

Papi confided to me (or I heard through secondhand gossip) that someone had spent … I am not at all sure how that went at all, actually. It seems as though Monica bought something in Costa Mesa (our forward base, my father’s home) that prompted either a call from MasterCard or Papi turned it up in the bills he scours. While I relish some comeuppance, really, it impacts me when their negative mood shortens their patience with my habits or situation.

The rest continues on and wastes your patience. These are meant to be mnemonics for a post that I should write the week following. Obviously, this is foolhardy as I have only done it twice. The better weekly form involves noting what happened each day, as it happens or at night before sleep. I only did so once, and only partly, for 9 week 41:

Fri – - – work; papi installed the fan but I had to vacuum

Sat – - – y—ing all day; The Surrogates; bought my first woot shirt, a sequoia; finally tripped on the sinning paint cover and scraped my elbow

Sun – - – papi finally read the water purification article and related an anecdote about the foolish shooting range lawsuit, writing more on mafia wars, papi cleaned house,

Unfortunately, I only noted fifteen weeks: 1-5, 25-33 except 27 and 32, and week 41. However, I did experiment with a more demanding beast, daily notes during the year’s first week and three closing April. But only the twenty-second and third match what you imagine they should look like.

I plan to leave at 2:00 to a bus station to reserve it for Araceli for Friday or whatever, at 3:30 we need to arrive at physical therapy; if there is a big gap, I may go to recycle our bottles and so on. I need to finally store all my clothes, I just ran out of shirts on the rack.

It turns out she meant she would call the bus station so I ended up annotating more (African) events during 1846 and eating lunch concurrently, Monica came to eat as well and watched a rerun of project runway; we left to phy therapy a tad late (so I could finish my sandwich). I read more from the most recent issue of the Economist and we returned.

I parked in front of Gloria’s house; I sent Coryr out again; no one has spoken on Mafia; I just finished reading all the webcomics; it seems appropriate to do some pushups and situps when I finish watching the Zero Punctuation episode in a few seconds. The reason I ought to do it now, as opposed to more annotation (Miriam is downstairs), is because I am somewhat committed to watching three more hours of television content today: Mythbusters at 6,00 (it is currently 5:30), Lost at 9:00, and the Unusuals right after.

While these qualify as posts unpublished, they are only a shadow of my full day. I tried that foolishness for a few days following February second. Unfortunately, I was still on Everyman time and neglected to take down dates or even put AM and PM. I conceived of this as a challenge to see whether I could emulate Buckminster Fuller’s full life documentation. Annoyingly, I took this as an opportunity to try out a tiny notebook that my mother foolishly gifted me. ‘Foolishly’ because it measures 3” x 5.” I like to open bound books and notebooks only 90°, to preserve the binding. Spiral wires are more forgiving, except to their first and last pages. Seeing someone bend magazines or sinning books so the covers meet is like seeing someone’s arm twisted or hearing someone grind a car’s manual transmission. I witness the abuse of a valuable object. So, the small size becomes smaller as I decide to hold the book awkwardly and I confronted that dread foe of the exhibitionist, a sense of (affronted) privacy. So I stopped. Before turning to the next though, let’s look at a representative sample:

12 finished cereal, bring back my car, abuela returned. 12,06 eating again. 12,17 cooking Canadian Bacon, peanut butter banana sandwich tomorrow. [[earlier, I noted that I should carry a highlighter to distinguish between events, commands, and musings.]] 12,36 I didn’t cook it long enough to melt the fat like on normal bacon; I added little bits of Monterey Jack. 12,42 finished eating, going to call therapy now and play it by ear. 12,54 appointment at 2,00, on computer now. 1,56 we left late because of (one?)

It was just as thrilling to interrupt my thoughts and activities to ‘confess’ what I was doing as it is to read it. As I am on the subject of this Twittimitation, I created an actual twitter account during early December. With these harrowing confrontations of my reticence, I only plan to update it with pithy observations. As of late, these come less quickly than I like, but that stems from the fact that I am barely writing anything at all.

I’ll admit, I overstated my case above. The point of this tremendous list of how I failed to record what I did on my summer vacation isn’t about that foolish plea for Posterity to notice me. I referenced the problem when complaining about rebuilding my week from just a few days later. I look back on a year with my fleshy memory cells, but primarily with these external annotations. I inwardly scoff when people say “where did the time go?” You spent every second just as fast as I (unless you are an astronaut). The trick is keeping perspective of all that happened in between those visits by maturing youngsters.

I’ll admit it is exceedingly difficult to keep that sort of stuff in mind. When I was younger enough that I didn’t drive, I would daydream during stretches on the freeway, mostly about what was passing by. Often that would take the form of hyper-destructive ‘I have telekinesis and throw SUV’s through buildings et cetera.’ Another, relevant, daydream involved trying to visualize the distance we travelled. Not the total distance, but just a smaller amount like a mile or two. You have seen the helpful signs that list the miles to the next exit. So, I would note one and start ‘laying tape.’ I could see the sign receding behind us for a time, but we might go over a rise or turn and I would still have to project its hypothetical location moving back at the same speed as the car. I could never keep it for farther than, perhaps, half a mile. The ‘tape’ would seem to reach a limit where lengthening it more would seem to have no effect: I lost perspective. The same glass ceiling blocks attempts to visualize a billion dollars, or the cells on the back of my hand. Arguably, walking two miles could make it clearer than sitting in a vehicle travelling at seventy miles per hour. Still, when I walked (briskly, of course) four times around the track for a mile in middle and high school, the linear distance still felt occult and unwieldy. So too with the passing days.

I’ll admit, I felt some of that foolish shock this Christmas in noticing that my (female) cousin’s voices had changed, probably deepened. Partly, I’m missing the point because it has to do with updating my representation of them. I treated this in an older post here, so I’ll be brief. We would remember every day if we had really emotional experiences through the whole time. (And those would mash together too unless they engaged different emotions each time. “Yeah, I went to Paris for a week, but had to swim back until the pirates captured me and I was afraid they would go from ransom to killing, then I broke out and landed in Bolivia, where I won the lottery, and then Tarzan and Batman fought to seduce me, but I ignored them because I only just started to read the whole Harry Potter series, and then I nearly died in an auto accident driving back home and saw Jesus and all the Mormon angels, and then, and then, and then.” I had fun stringing that together.) I’m inclined to say that pulp adventurer would have a better chance of resisting the “golly you are sure big,” because change is such a predominant part of hiser life. The rest of us deal with a great amount of routine. We wake in the same bed, take one of two paths to work – at most, and eat one of the classic livestock cuts (“Turdunken again? When are we going to have emu, mom?”). Soooo, that is why noting down what happened is so important. I may not feel the miles under my feet any longer, but I can look at miles of ink spilt or one megabyte of text and fake that sense.

Before I turn to another device, I should clip a loose thread. I stated that the latter daily notes were blow by blow reflections. The first few reflected an altogether different approach. One of my ‘oft referenced’ files is called ‘immediate use,’ but I treat it more like an immediate deposit. I use it to place notes I intend to use somewhat later, but seldom do. The result is a mishmash that indirectly shows the evolution of my interests, albeit defunct or idle forms. In an attempt to circumvent this unmeaningful stockpile and instill a more aware attitude, I opted to use each day to document which sites I visited and copied in the more eloquent paragraphs of whatever I read. Sure, I could go through my browser history – and sometimes do if the memory and site was distinct enough – but a fair number are spammy, like deviantart, which classes each user as a separate site. I gave up, but with the right organizational strategy I may incorporate it eventually.

I shouldn’t, but often blame that habit of filtering depositories. I maintain a normal notebook as a journal. But it is too big to take to work, for those occasions when I operate the elevator, so I have a smaller work journal. When I have forgotten the work journal, I often resort to writing on a napkin (they stock a kind well suited to my needs). Should I copy what I wrote verbatim back into my normal journal; would that bore me? I maintain the aforementioned text files about weekly events. So, even if I made a comprehensive file for stream of consciousness, events, and what I’m looking at, I would feel divided about whether and how much to trade with my physical journals. Of course, more writing is better, but the anxiety I created forestalled most writing in general and doomed that experiment in particular.

I use a 180 sheet spiral bound notebook that I began the fourth day of last year and haven’t yet picked up this year (oh, ho those are timeless puns). I could list the sort of entries I most often relied on, but that isn’t entirely the point. Revealing patterns in my writing may entertain, but involves more history than historiography. Instead, I’ll illuminate via a ruthless mathematical device: statistics.

The vertical values are plain by the legend: days elapsed in between journal entries. The numbers on the bottom indicate the month and its frequency indicates the number of posts made during that month. From the outset, I admit a major compromise in the way I compiled the data. If you add all the days elapsed, it should miss 365 by the number of posts. Where ever you see a data point but no column, that indicates I wrote another post the very next day. I could have made that ‘one day elapsed,’ but that would seem to punish me. A week where I wrote every day would show seven days elapsed, even though I didn’t miss an opportunity. So, to keep it consistent, I always subtracted one day, even when I didn’t write the next day. Perhaps, a more honest legend would have been ‘consecutive days without writing.’ In the end though, the graph is exactly the same but just shifted one up for all data points.

Nevertheless, the graph does reveal an important seasonal trend. I wrote least during periods of least responsibility. The lowest month was June, which correlates with when the rest of my family went on vacation. I even forgot about my birthday until they came back and reminded me. I can’t tell you what I did because, appropriately, I didn’t write anything down. Very likely, I surfed the net and whomped on Cortex Command’s AI. My best month was September. Unsurprisingly I was in school and using my journal to plan out homework, both essays and programs. However, school (and elevator duty) incentivize journaling because they are the most entertaining thing to do during lulls in activity. At work I can get a tremendous amount of reading done because I have nothing to do for eight hours straight (barring interruptions). At home, the offered content on the internet presents a temptation that I resist only with effort or boredom.

I decided against checking the frequency for my work journal. The option of manning the elevator only comes up once a week and isn’t always offered, so its delays are unrepresentative to my overall writing effort and more reflect my work schedule.

One entry, the second, in my journal deserves mention. I read through the journal I had just finished and made a brief index for it. While cool, putting it in a totally different book makes no sense if they aren’t kept in sequence and the conceit isn’t known ahead of time. So, I conceived of an alternative to mucking up the inside back cover. I could, but haven’t yet, reserve one spiral notebook solely as an index. A table of contents would be nicer but I don’t focus that much on any given day. It might begin with a list of what I should do, then some unpleasant event to vent about, and finish with some meandering possibilities about how to handle my current project. And then, I do the same thing the next day or, possibly, copy straight text out of a library book.

I can surmount the problem of ordering my journals, but with some uncomfortable compromises. These past few years, I have used a single notebook to completion (supplemented with my work notebook). But, before then, I used to write in several at once depending upon which I found most conveniently. So a chronological path jumps between two or three sources for a few years. Less helpful is if I miss an early journal and have to index it after much newer material. There are more complaints, but I must recognize that if I include the date (which I scrupulously put) in addition to the page number, the index itself resolves all these difficulties of future reference by explicitly showing the chronological order of entries within the space of a couple sheets rather than spread across books as is the present status quo. It doesn’t make it easier to compile the index, but at least future reference is much easier. I may yet put that into practice.

The preceeding has been, as Hamlet is made to say, “words, words, words.” The most engaging references are visual. I sympathize with the injunction to take loads of pictures, of myself, my surroundings, and anything out of the ordinary. Their value is unquestionable. Pictures from our Europe trip are superb mnemenotics. And, I know the gap of forsaking pictures. We may be a couple thousand feet from where we used to live, but I have no idea what the inside of that house looks like anymore. It is a shame that it has traded again since then so I can’t use the excuse, “Remember when you bought this house (ten?) years ago? Could I look around to rekindle my memories of when I used to live here?” Of course, I don’t need to go there. My parents took plenty of pictures that I can look at for reference. Wary of forsaking change, I made a (one minute) video of my room the year before.

Unfortunately, I have ignored the more personal subject, myself. One set each month seemed like a reasonable goal last January; but, I failed to take half that many. Further, I usually only remember to charge my camera after a change, like cutting my hair.

My more favored visual media is pencil. My journals occasionally have doodle addenda. While these illuminate the passage, few are of any consequence. Only two projects received much dedication. I drew several versions of Supheter, my character embodied in D&D sessions. I noted the more engaging project in my report on Cortex Command. I do admit that most involves deciding elements of the larger story rather than drawing the next segment at all. However, close to the semester’s end, I reevaluated the climax for the first episode and gave it a much more meaningful conclusion. I let myself fuss about layouts and word balloons in abstract rather than mocking them up. Until I commit to inking a real version or using a stylus with Flash, the project bangs on the metaphoric glass.

Those, however, only represent the mandate of my muse. This semester of drawing forced me to produce even more work. That journal contains portraits, rooms, and horrid contour drawings. (Those are hand-eye coordination exercises, wherein the artist draws without referring to the page at all.) They haven’t digital copies yet. Because she asked us to use graphite layers to simplify ‘shading,’ I am concerned it may dirty the glass more than usual.

Deviantart reminded me that I did upload another collection. Way back when I still ground out turns on the Conquer Club (risk imitation), I made some potential submissions. In fact, I made a big, blank world map in anticipation of playtesting it with real pieces. When I grew bored, I used it to cover my books from dust. A couple months ago, I hung it over my laptop, so it is silly of me not to have remembered. Hidden in plain sight. I use another site to distribute forgettable creations, Flickr. Besides my stock logging, I primarily use it to show people stuff.

Chase’s album has a couple pictures of me during our D&D sessions. He also recorded an entire session on camera, but I understood it went straight into storage. (Size precludes sharing.) My sister may have caught me once or twice in family gathering photos. I admit that, as camera man, I seldom remember to take more than one of myself. I justify the absence by relying on my self-portraits. Nevertheless, unposed shots are my absolute favorite. While participants may resent it, I try to catch them before they can group hug and tooth show.

I did shoot one video myself. At Froi’s wedding, Manolo gave a speech as the best man. So he would have a copy, I taped him. Unfortunately, he compromised his computer so we had to restore it to day one. Even worse, he kept his ‘account’ password protected. We did save all the ‘my documents,’ but his is unreachable because we haven’t the ‘authority’ anymore. I don’t recall if I uploaded a copy because it was on his camera and so sinning big. I can report one novel recording. I made an audio file of me singing. One of the songs I have engraved into muscle memory is the ‘Modern Major General’ parody from the last episode of the show Reboot. It turns out, I misheard some of the words when I first learnt it, so I have multiple takes where I stumble reading the divergent lyrics.

There are more, trivial records online. I discovered (forum based) Mafia on Conquer Club and still hope to play it in a group some day. I saved the entire log of conversation for the first four or so games, to analyze who might be town or mafia or cult. I used my datarealms account, but it pines for when I finish some episodes of my Cortex Comic. Such is the difference between wanting the perks of a writer and wanting to write as a hobby or job. Earlier in the year I announced which book I had just finished, as a Facebook status. Now I pollute with their brand of ads. Soon after I joined, I cordoned it to only those who play Zynga’s games, but with the new rules, I think it has seeped out to everyone again. Perhaps I should check but it isn’t as though I don’t ignore the great majority of my ‘friend’s posts.

I sent seventy five emails this year. This semester saw fifty. Of those fifty, over half are from me to me. Actually, it would be more but I deleted some because yahoo doesn’t sense when I am sending it to myself so I end up with two copies. I resorted to this primarily when I worked on papers at school or had to print one out here. Since I moved into my room, venturing around the rest of the house is exceedingly annoying. My battery has devolved to the stage where it lasts twelve minutes. It is my fault for leaving it plugged in all day. I don’t need it’s portability for the common use; I value it for when I transition between my parent’s houses. Five years ago, during some of the LAN parties at Kevin’s house, I drug around my family’s tower and that was a major pain. When I move into my own abode, I will trade up for a desktop.

Various agencies update their records of my activity. School has its grades (and updated its host to a more convenient system, to the chagrin of the professors). SFFCU gives me all sorts of receipts, bank statements, and credit card bills that I should shred but mainly stockpile. The credit card bills are the least useful, as I tell to everyone who will listen. Because I pass the credit union on the way home, I can deposit my pay and clear my balance without using a nonperforming checking account. That is why I will never take out a line with any retail outlet for a one time benefit. Common sense suggests that the libraries I patronize should keep a record of my rental history. Since the Patriot Act scare nine years ago, most systems live like they have Anterograde Amnesia. I guess it cuts down on their storage overhead. Sigalert is another agency that absolutely should keep archives of the data stream it transmits. Sure, I want to know how traffic is right now. However, if I am going to leave some time within the next two hours, but I want to ditch rush hour traffic, their site is no good. I can’t sit there for the next two hours hitting refresh. The moment I see some reduced flow, it is too late and I will hit a bigger dam by the time I reach there. A long time ago, I managed to find a site that did host pictures of freeway traffic for several years in hourly segments. Fool that I was, I didn’t save the sinning address and don’t really expect to find it again with so many fool traffic news reports cluttering the search results. If you know of such a site I would be extremely grateful if you share the link.

We have just about reached the end. Microsoft formats this to the end of the fourteenth page. So, dead last is the worst record: those unshared. At various points during year nine – and elsewhen – I began some posts and gave up the moment I got tired. For example, I began a review that would have contrasted the reality shows True Beauty and 13: Fear is Real. I still despise the inept and largely dishonest ethical basis of the former. However, in disgust, I stopped watching it. Typing the potential article felt less urgent. It was easy to let it lie. At least it is saved, even if I don’t publish it.

That, as much as keeping up with the Lloyds, prompted this (weeklong) effort. My own posterity is undoubtedly assured. Despite the meager rate of documentation, I am perhaps average for my generation (substituting journaling for tons of vlogs or photos). In contrast, my grandmother has a bunch of pictures, but because she had to leave middle school and work the rest of her life, hers is currently an oral history. I must write her biography this year. And that of my father’s parents, but she lives with us so it is more convenient. I would like to leave it at just interviewing her, but that forsakes a lot of nuance. Some years ago, I made a tape recording of a family friend some weeks away from his death. It was obviously too late and I didn’t have posterity in mind, so I went with the strongest association I had. He was with my mother’s father as a political prisoner in Cuba. His answer left much to be desired, but in retrospect he had lived decades since then. It would have been nice to press him about his life in general and perhaps make a copy as a gift for his family. Ultimately, there was a conflict of interest.

With my own relatives, I have the opposite concern. I want to know everything, which makes the project feel unwieldy. Most advice is geared toward genealogy hobbyists, who focus on finding the whole tree and perhaps regard stories as a happy, yet incidental, surprise. The rest treats biographers’ methods which may be as impersonal as studying MLB’s journals and such or some interview techniques. They strive to make a compelling narrative, focusing on unusual anecdotes or ‘formative experiences.’ That too can underrepresent my subjexts. Should I try to get a blow by blow account; let her just tell stories about whatever she wants for an hour; or use her as a way to look at life in Cuba, Florida, and Orange County through different periods with her particulars as ‘secondary?’

I looked through a couple of historical societies’ websites but didn’t notice a mission statement declaring what is of historical value. How do I know what to preserve? Sure, it isn’t likely that I will donate these to a similar group, but it would be nice to have some suggestions about what to focus on. Likely, a text on historian’s methodologies will confirm my suspicion: everything is of value. Because of the dissertation system, new graduates must fragment out into whatever isn’t covered yet but has a good body of suggestively similar opinions. On the other hand, what would my descendants want to know about her? Regardless, the interviews are valuable in themselves. The biography serves as an index for them more than a concerted effort to memorialize her. That would take too long and I might lose other sources before I am ready.

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