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Living in the Past

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By year’s end, this blog will turn ten years old.

As it’s been about my life, it sure feels like I’ve been writing it all my life. And if you lean as heavily as I have on diaries and journals, that’s definitely true.

If you’re new here, it began on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010, with this post.

In those early days, all I knew about the scope of the blog was I’d: 1) Edit each draft as much as necessary before publishing; 2) Rely on sense memory and recall for those posts leading up to the first diaries and journals (in 1972–73); and 3) Write regularly (I aimed for 4–5 posts a month) and go deep (explore everything about your life).

My motivation? Grieving the loss of my parents (both died in 2008) and recovering from depression and anxiety. Another motivator was getting boxes upon boxes of photos and memorabilia from my brother. Those really helped in producing the second step listed above, since memory alone is a flimsy thing. Once I got to the early 1970s, a new step was added to the above—one I still employ today: reading over the journals before sitting down to draft a post.

I’ve also kept a legal pad on a clipboard (for the past ten years) with a running list of story ideas. Ideally I’ll review where I am in the chronology (currently we’re in the spring and early summer of 1993), but sometimes I’ll get an idea for something based on a cultural concept (like old TV, radio, or even drive-in movies) or a family ritual (like summer vacations or mealtimes) or a way of behaving that feels worth investigating (like being a young diarist).

The “editorial slate” is the official name for this running list, and it sort of requires at least an hour or two of downtime (phone off, no Internet, surrounded by mementos and photos and aforementioned clipboard) to do a gut check and see what’s kicking around in my head and heart.

For example, this post “Living in the Past” was originally going to be titled “Junk” and work in some stories about the early 1990s when old friend Terry and I hit flea markets to buy and sell our combined junk. That could still be a future entry, but being it is a new year (2020—whoa—who knew we’d make it this far?), I felt a post with a reset button was in order, throwing in a dash of the current narrative of 1993 (post-Kentucky Derby road trip) for good measure.

So let’s drop the needle on Jethro Tull’s “Living in the Past” (released in 1969) and sniff the air of winter 1972–73 (we’d just arrived in Minnesota the previous year). It’s cold and smells slightly moldy, I recall. Bleak, gray, morose. I was probably standing on my bed, looking out the window at our driveway, wondering about the future.

Fast forward. Twenty years later, it’s spring 1993.

Everything feels new since I’m no longer in Minnetonka, or even Hopkins for that matter, but St. Paul, Minnesota. It’s a Tuesday evening, May 11. I’m at the Macalester College library, writing after a long day’s work at a contract gig, “the BSI project for CTS” the journal entry states, and mulling thoughts after returning from Kentucky on a long weekend getaway.

“I’ve made some immediate short-term decisions,” I wrote. “First, I will be moving out of 191 Western on July 31st. Since the weather’s gotten nicer, the neighborhood’s gotten worse.” I was worried about crime and vagrancy and running my new desktop publishing business out of Cathedral Hill. I had my eye on moving further west, over to Merriam Park.

At The Clearing, in Wisconsin, fall 1986.

“It’s really getting me down,” I confessed. “I feel like I don’t want to be there [at my apartment, to work]. So I’ll be looking around and first will make a list of all that I want and need in a St. Paul apartment—then get another 6-month lease—and if I like it, probably stick with the business program through the fall, winter, and next spring. With a list and some steady looking, I’m sure I’ll find a better place.”

That wouldn’t happen until later that summer, but I was already planning my next trip out of state: to cousin Jason’s wedding in Corpus Christi, Texas, on June 18. For that I’d be getting a plane ticket and visiting Texas for the first time. Another adventure! I can still feel the excitement and anticipation, even after all these years.

“So tonight,” I concluded the entry, “I’m going to try to pull myself through doing some more work on the screenplay. In view of leaving Cathedral Hill, I’ve been looking over my Daytimer Journal of the last couple months—Wow, such a lot in a little time. I wonder what more is ahead?”

Yeah, don’t we all?


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