Concluding Volume 44

As 2018 drains away by the minute, I become ever more mindful of the usual milestone year-end promptings. This has become the inevitable time for me to look back on the year that was, or at least the things about it I saw fit to record in my own hand. Well, actually, in my own text on a Word file. More on my mode of recording my life and times later. For the here and now though I am going to wax philosophical on keeping a personal record of my life in the first person as it happens. Regular readers are aware that this blog is an outgrowth of my daily personal journal. Since I started this practice in high school it has evolved into a disciplined habit. As it turns out, it is one that not many people I meet indulge or even dabble in, not for forty-four consecutive years anyway. Certainly a reasonable question is what do I write in it every day. There is the usual mundane things of a boring life of a divorced middle-aged man and an occasional description of a noteworthy event detailing who was there, what we did and when we did it. Believe it or not, having access to kept records like that has come in handy over the years. More than that though, what it has a become is a huge personal data base of my life and those who have been a part of it. There have been people before me who have articulated the motivation for keeping an ongoing personal record better than anything I could possibly attempt to explain here.

2018 has certainly been a unique addition to the ongoing Freak Show Mr. Carlin so eloquently described.  I have also kept my notes on who has done what and with which and to whom.  The entire experience of 2018 has at times taken on a surreal quality.  Back in late March and into April, I along with so many others nationwide, watched in stunned amazement how passionate classroom teachers walked out of their schools throughout the State of Oklahoma and walked sometimes over a hundred miles to send a message to the legislators at the State Capitol that their governance regarding public education was unacceptable.  The surrealism was dialed up in November when Oklahoma voters opted to continue more of the same policies that prompted the teacher walkout by electing a novice politician for governor and reelecting a solid supermajority of GOP legislators, many of whom are antithetical to public education.  

  

The March for Our Lives happened locally before our very eyes and simultaneously with a national event back in March.  The effect of this particular protest was for the most part negligible along the most conservative stretch of the Mother Road but nationally was a factor in some Congressional races helping the Dems pick up 40 House seats.  

Probably the most shocking not to mention pleasing surprises of 2018 in all of Oklahoma was the passage of State Question 788 legalizing Medical Cannabis in late June.  Even after a media blitz by the usual factions opposing such things, the measure passed with a whopping 57% approval of the state’s voters.  Change in America has a track record of being slow in coming and even slower in the Sooner State but this gave many of the skeptics a huge boost of hope.  

 

So, what is to become of all these cataloged journal entries and volumes of records? No doubt there is a use for a repository of memories, dates, events, relationships and the intrapersonal dynamics of all of these things. Again, someone way before my time had ideas.

As I mentioned above, Volume 44 has been kept on a Word file. More specifically, a Word file for every month of the year. A few weeks ago I was reviewing some older volumes in the series, some hard copies of Word files and some older pre-1996 which were all hand written. One thing I did take note of was that all the longhand entries I read displayed an element of candor that seemed to be missing in all those that were typewritten. Words on paper will stay and the story they tell will never change in their “just the facts” presentation they convey to the reader but at the end of the day there is simply no substitute for genuine candor that a storyteller’s handwriting provides. It is for that reason that beginning with PDJ Entry # 45-001 it will again be all hand written. With due deference to Will Rogers, so many things done or omitted make for wonderful fiction for creative minds seeking to tell a captivating tale of love, adventure or woe. In 44 volumes I can vouch that I have much material from which to draw.

The Personal Daily Journal of Yours Truly has, over time, become quite a celebrated institution among certain people in my life. After forty-four years it is safe to say that it is the product of a practice that has withstood the test of time. When you consider that I began Volume 1 over nine months before the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired, that should pass any longevity test. As another year comes to an end, I must remember not only all those we lost but all those who are still in our lives and making history both up close and afar for we who sit in that proverbial front row taking notes. Farewell 2018 and all who made it what it was, for better or worse.