Trust Tommy

In my internet wanderings, I came across Áine’s blog. She states:

I have a minor obsession with recording every last thing that I think, do, or say, hence the blog.

I sat down at my laptop one day and was stumped as to what to write about. I decided to write about a childhood memory, having prescribed it as an anti-writer’s-block post idea 3 times now.

I was shocked to discover how little I could remember. Snatches here and there, obviously, but certainly not enough to do a blogpost about. There’s me, using my new-found reading skills to read an advertisement for two kittens which we later adopted. Then there’s the time I ratted on some kids in Gaelscoil Junior Infants class for not speaking Irish, and got a gold star on my forehead because I reported my snitching through their much sought after Gaelic language, and my little 5 year old heart bursting with pride as I wore the gold star like a war medal. Or that time I came out of the cinema to have Mom tell me Sandy, our golden retriever had been put down. That sucked.

But yes, memories involving cat, rat and dog, but nothing concrete or blogpostable.

And that worries me. I remember snatches of all the above memories, and a few dozen others, but they’re only snatches; nothing great. I know that memories by cliché, if not by definition are all hazy and unclear, but this is taking the mickey.

The incident of realization about this came about 6 weeks ago, and since then I’ve been making a conscious effort to document stuff. My notes file is now full of one-liners. No, not those, one line files of what I’m up to. Snapshots of how I spend my life.

Okay, that can’t possibly have sounded as poignant as I think it did.

Anyhow, I’m trying to do more – carry John’s old video camera with me whenever I go someplace interesting (reminds me, I still have a load of Web Awards vids – will probably never publish them though. Except for a cookie, perhaps.) and take photos of what I get up to.

I want, no, need to remember more.

That is also why I blog.