Journal: My Monthly Printing

I stole the idea from Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin. That philosopher, novelist, essayist (and a good one, too--I read all his works when I was in my Mary Obsession that lasted about a decade) kept a diary/journal throughout his life--right up to March 26, 1836, about two weeks before he died on April 7. His technique: leave the diary open on his desk, so when something happened, he could just write it down. (He didn't always write too much--as you can see from the image above.)

(BTW: His journal is now accessible online--though it has not, as far as I know, been published. Link to it. If you navigate a bit, you can also see images of the handwritten diary pages themselves.)

I started keeping a daily journal in January 1997 when I retired from my public-school teaching career. (Before 1997 I had occasionally kept one--very random and erratic and infrequent.) And I, like Godwin, kept my journal open on my desk--sort of: I kept an open file on my computer. As things happened, I typed them in.

And I still do.

Just now, I printed out my May 2020 journal pages--33 of them! (11-point font)--because, yes, I have a hard-copy of all the pages, too ... just in case.

So ... what is on those 33 pages?

Daily doings, of course. What we did during the day, where we went (virtually nowhere since COVID-19 arrived), what I read, streamed, thought about.

I also paste into those pages the desultory doggerel I write (most of which I post on Facebook, to the dismay of my friends) + emails and text messages that are significant to me + FB posts that are also important. I paste in the texts of letters I write to people--though that enterprise has faded considerably, principally because the people to whom I wrote the most letters are no longer alive.

I would write to my mom twice a week, to my great friend and colleague Andy Kmetz once a week, and, during his final illness, to my old Hiram High School friend and teammate Andy Krauss once a week.

No more.

And I miss it ...  I write very few letters now: Virtually everyone I know is online ...

The journal has proved an invaluable resource for me--an ally of my (weakening) memory. I search it continually for things like this: When did we hear Russell Banks talk about his John Brown novel? When did we visit Hemingway's grave? When and where did we see Richard II? On what day of the week was our grandson Logan born? What was my last day of teaching at Western Reserve Academy in 2011? What was the last time I went to Saywell's Drugstore before it closed forever? (I had coffee and a bagel-with-crunchy-peanut butter there every day for years.) What day in 1997 did we sell our house in Aurora? When was the last time I went to Oregon to see my dad's family?

And on and on and on and on.

I have no hope or daffy dream that my journal will ever be online (in fact, I think I'll adjust my will accordingly!), but for me it has been an essential companion--a comfort even--and I hope that for those family who survive me it will be a record of what the Old Man was like--of how much he loved his wife and family--of, okay, what a nerd he was.