I have two large cardboard boxes here filled with my appointment diaries stretching back to 1988. For some time I've been intending to throw them out once I've made a note of the major 'events', like vacations taken and shows directed, across the years. Not sure why I feel the need to record in this fashion, but it seems important as a way of capturing a few milestones along the way and I don't think I'll be able to discard the decaying diaries unless I do this.
I made a start today, transcribing key stuff from 1988 - 2000, and I'm hoping to finish the remaining years tomorrow, then take the diaries to Melaka to burn them there. It's been quite strange revisiting the past in this way, especially given the careless nature of the various scribbled entries. I only noted as sparely as I could what I needed to do to keep my life on its tracks, and little on the page makes coherent sense now.
I can't help but notice how the diaries tend to increase in terms of the detail of what I recorded over the years. Either my working life got more complicated, or my memory got worse, or a bit of both. I'm also struck by how the terminology I employed changed over time. There are quite a number of acronyms I suppose I must have understood then and deemed of some importance that just seem downright strange today. So much that mattered then that's entirely lost.
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