Journals, Anne Frank, ...

I began my first journal at 12; that was more than two decades ago. I am reminded because today was Anne Frank’s birthday.

I would have liked to have read through those early journals of mine but whenever I thought that I had passed through the particular developmental stage I had been in I destroyed the journal. I believed that I continually reinvented myself and in a sense that was true. I did not want representations of the pupa to survive.

I do not remember the exact reasons: I am no longer the child I was. And that is the reason I would now like to read those journals. I am not the child I was.

The essential problem with hindsight is that we cannot recreate past psychological states. The promise of technologies like this blog is that they create durable records of current states as text or pictures or audio or video. Our lives will be recorded; perhaps they may even be examined.