Journaling a Historic Event

May 14, 2022

We are living in historic times, starting with the Covid lockdowns in 2020. I don’t know about you, but I feel like my feet are standing on a shifting sandbar and the tide is tugging me out to sea. What new hell awaits us tomorrow? As if baby formula, diesel fuel shortages and suspicious factory fires aren’t bad enough, “they” advise us to just calm down. “Trust us. We are from the government.” I think a famous television cowboy-slash-president warned us about them. Meanwhile, many of us see the three horses of the apocalypse on the horizon. Hey, right now, I’d be open to the aliens riding over the hill like the cavalry in the old TV westerns. I’ve been flipping through old Twilight Zone reruns for any prescient episodes to help deal with this mess on planet earth and found the episode, “To Serve Man.” Harry Harrison’s book, Make Room! Make Room! was way ahead of the curve. The movie adaptation, Soylent Green, took place in the year 2022. Talk about prescient. Anyone hungry?

Computers and social media didn’t exist during the great depression. My relatives had to resort to in-person conversations or the telephone. What were they worried about before and during the two world wars? Unfortunately, no one I know left any written diaries or published memoirs from that time period. Let’s not let that happen now. Pick up a pen and write or sit in front of your computer and type your feelings and fears. But remember to print out everything. Electricity could be the next luxury we’ll lose and without it, your written thoughts disappear into cyberspace … gone.

I’m following Autumn’s Backyard Gardening’s videos on YouTube. She recommends everyone keep a written account of what is happening in their lives right now. For once, I’m ahead of the game. In 2019, I bought an Amy Knapp planner for 2019-2020 and found a simple process to journal my life. Addicted to the process, I bought 2020-2021, 2021-2022 and the other day ordered 2022-2023. And each morning while drinking my coffee, with my purring cat on the barstool next to me, I peruse the Internet and take notes. My writing is incredibly messy, with scribbles in the margin, and occasionally words written upside down, the ink smudged. That’s because I listen to YouTube while washing the dishes and run to my notepaper to write down a to-do item, my wet fingers dripping sudsy water on the page.

Now this blog is another way to journal my thoughts, fears and plans. This is my first potential world war, perhaps my first on stage appearance in the ad-lib dramatic comedy called Armageddon. So please excuse me while I bumble through my musing. At least you can’t hear my cuss words. Trust me, that’s a good thing, since drugs, mothers’ way of coping, are quickly disappearing off the shelves. As is beer, wine ….