On Sunday, while looking for something else, I stumbled across a journal that I kept for six weeks in 1991. Journals are a lot like blogs; you write in them regularly for a while until you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, and no-one else reads them but you.<\/p>\n
It covered a period when I first traveled to Sweden. It was written to help me remember what it was like to be alone in a foreign country for the first time. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit sad, because, at the point that I discovered it, I had absolutely no recollection that it even existed (Errr.. the journal, I mean, not Sweden.)<\/p>\n
So, what did I discover about my twenty-year-old self?<\/p>\n
God, he was boring!<\/p>\n
Why was he so fascinated with what he cooked, what he watched on TV, and how he managed to withdraw the (equivalent of) $20 from the bank. Who cares?<\/p>\n
\n2 Jun 1991<\/strong><\/p>\n
Clean up today. Watched Hollywood Bowl on Filmnet [Filmnet = Cable TV station.]<\/em><\/p>\n
Napoli sauce with microwaved rice. Nice!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Shoot me\/him now!<\/p>\n
Where are the stories? Where is the intrigue? Where are the exciting experiences of living abroad?<\/p>\n
Oh, and I get it. He missed his girlfriend. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great hook, but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t waste the human interest angle by merely chronicling every letter and phone call made and received! It just gets boring.<\/p>\n
It’s not like nothing was happening. He had a short jaunt over to Finland by ship. Seven of his friends took this exotic cruise, into a foreign land. What did he have to say for himself at the end of the first day of travel?<\/p>\n
\n14 Jun 1991<\/strong>
\nWent to Helsinki in huge ferry only 3 weeks old.
\n[.. list of the people who went\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6]<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n(Fortunately, the next day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entry about Helsinki was slightly more loquacious.)<\/p>\n
The experiences were actually happening around him, he just wasn’t aware enough to write them down. <\/p>\n
People who sit still enough to listen to my stories know about my theory of Swedish flagpoles, the poor king who lost his hat, and why Swedish bakers always<\/em> send cookies to the palace at Christmas time. All of these tall stories come from one boat trip to Viggs\u00c3\u00b6 Island. It was a rich vein of memories for me. However, you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know to read the diary. Nary one is mentioned in the diary entry for that day.<\/p>\n
The saddest part is that sometimes you can see the vestiges of what became much better stories.<\/p>\n
\n21 May 1991<\/strong>
\nGot hopelessly lost on way to work. First turn I took was wrong. Was beeped at by bus at traffic light. Turned out to be one way street where opposite direction was bus lane only! I had done a U-turn though.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSound familiar<\/a>? (At least it turns out my memory was clear<\/a>!)<\/p>\n
The diary has \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dag f\u00c3\u00b6r Dag\u00e2\u20ac\u009d printed on the front. If you translate that from Swedish, it translates to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153day by day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I think the original text is closer to the mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Sunday, while looking for something else, I stumbled across a journal that I kept for six weeks in 1991. <\/p>\n
So, what did I discover about my twenty-year-old self?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35,21,41],"tags":[67,246],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-heroic-failures","category-observation","category-story-telling","tag-history","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}