My life written down, sort of

I always get bummed that I forget so many cool stories, whether truly incredible or quaintly inane. It still amazes me to go back and read my pseudo-diary entries the few times in my life where I actually chose to do so, which were inevitably always on traveling adventures--studying abroad in Montpellier, traveling through Europe, working in Geneva, traveling in Ghana. What's amazing is your brain's ability to retrieve those memories, even as subtle as a brief encounter on a train ride, when given the smallest of reminders of the event. In the absence of such a stimulus, the event, though almost never deleted, is locked away deep within your brain, likely never to be heard from again.

So finally, FINALLY, I am stepping up and writing things down. Writing anything, it doesn't matter. A lot of this will be just "stuff". But interesting things happen much more often than you realize, and so until I have a camera taking pictures everywhere I go this will serve as the surrogate for a memory that is plenty good enough to remember all the details but cruel enough to lock them up and throw the key away forever.