I’ve grown accustom to taking a drive in the evenings, after my usual nap, to grab a coffee in the nearest city. The drive takes about an hour, round trip, and is a good time for me to reflect on what’s going on in my life and the rest of it. For some time now, I’ve been thinking about writing an autobiography.
Now, I don’t have a whole lot of free time, but I think that I need to start working on this project. Actually, when I really think about it, this is probably the worst time for me to decide to schedule this activity into my days. I really should’ve done it when I was under-employed.
On the other hand, this is probably the best time in my life for me to do something like this. I’m working on getting a degree so that I can start a new career, I don’t have a girlfriend, and I’m about to experience a drastic change in my life – a career that I might actually really enjoy. All of these aspects of my current life make it a great time for me to work on an autobiography because my life will inevitably change as I make gains in the way of work and love. Right now, there isn’t a lot asking for my attention, other than my own thoughts and my beloved cat.
There is one more reason that I think I really need to get started on this project: I’m forgetting a lot. I used to be pretty sharp and mentally agile, but I just can’t perform the way I used to. I’m really afraid of forgetting. In fact, I hate forgetting. That my memory seems to fading so rapidly is really disturbing me. I’m not sure what the cause is, but I’m hoping that reading a little bit more, writing creatively more often, and putting an honest effort into completing my assignments, will help my brain work better.
And, onto the logistics of this project.
Initially, I thought that writing the first draft of my autobiography on this blog was a good idea. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that it may not be such a good idea. I want to write it on here because I want to publicize the writing process, documenting all of the gains and failures that I work with and through as I write.
Here’s the biggest problem that I can foresee with writing the first draft on my blog: people can read it. So, I thought about making it a password-protected section of the blog. But, what if someone passes along the password to someone who I really don’t want reading it? But, if I ever publish the work, everybody, even those who you don’t want to read it, can read it, so you really gain nothing by keeping it a secret. But, there is a security in secrecy.
If I write the autobiography in its entirety and then present it to the world, it’ll be a shock. It might also give me a more control over exposing myself to the world when the time is right. But, really, what have I got to hide? A fucking load!
So, I have to somehow manage who reads what I write, if I’m going to publish the first draft as I write it. What about a registration type of thing? You know, you have to register in order to read that particular section of the website? But, do you really want to remember another username and password? If I didn’t have Keychain on my computer, I’d spend about half of my day recovering forgotten passwords.
Wait! You probably have some fancy system on your computer that remembers passwords for you, too. Brilliant. Let’s do it that way. Cool?
Finally, the last thing I need to do is schedule in the time. Here’s what I’m thinking: no more than 20 minutes a day, or 140 minutes a week, is to be spent writing the autobiography, or working on it in any other way.
The timer on my phone just went off, so I’ll start wrapping this post up.
Here’s the working title for my autobiography: Hare Coursing. Look for a link in the navigation bar across the top.
UPDATE: I can’t figure out how to create users and all that jazz, right now. So, for now, the page will be password protected. I’ll just keep a log of who I send the password to. If you want the password, please feel free to email me or leave a comment (all comments are moderated before publication).
What do you think about this project? Can you offer any suggestions? Is this something that you’d even be interested in reading? Really?
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