I wrote a private diary for a couple of years as a teenager. The mind-numbing tedium of the entries made me stop. I wish I'd continued. They'd be fun to read now, years later. J. C. Hewitt is right. The payoff is long-term. I'd like to know what I ate for dinner on April 18, 1988 or something. The mundane aggregated and reviewed from far away becomes tantalizing. This is why Proust started with his famous madeline.

I've blogged for almost 5 years now, but that's not the same. A private journal would be very different and valuable.

I can't journal now. The process feels alien to my psychology, due to the amount of public writing I do. I am however starting to sketch out memoirs. That's like backdated journalling through foggy memories.

Memoirs are not the same thing as autobiographies. The latter is how important people tell their story primarily to others. Memoirs are how ordinary people tell their story primarily to themselves and future anthropologists. I've realized that I'll am unlikely to live an autobiography worthy life. Too much banal water under the bridge. But I think I could do memoirs that I'll enjoy writing, even if nobody wants to read them.

I loved the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Some day I'll tackle Proust beyond page 5. I'd like to attempt memoirs that fall in between those two classics.