Death in your pocket

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I’ve been trying to summarize what has been running around and around in my head for the last year. I’ve been thinking about death and dying and what that means, and what I want it to mean. Because in the end, what do we really leave?

There are three parts to this

1. My dad’s death left an impression on me in a number of ways
2. I’ve been depressed the last few weeks
3. And I’ve been reading a lot on stoicism

The way we die

I don’t know if my dad saw it coming. He;d been struggling with back pain and chest congestion for the few weeks leading up to the stroke that hospitalized him. Even if he was had an idea, he wouldn’t have left himself be aware of it, not acknowledge it. He was kind of a half assed Buddhist in that he believed life was suffering but didn’t take the next steps to understand or lessen it in himself. Rather, he figured he should just accept whatever is handed him, he didn’t have much control over it anyway.

It’s speculation but speculation that comes from some conversations about my own depression and successful treatment of it with medication. He didn’t seem interested in trying to treat his own flat or disaffected moods.

So I don’t think he would have necessarily done anything much if he’d known. Or maybe even changed anything in his life. He worked at a job he loathed literally up until he was hospitalized. I don’t want that to be me.

A half way point?

I turned 35 this month. The most recent generations of men in my familiar all died around 70 years. That would put me at 50%. Half way through my own life. And what do I have to show for it, what really lasting thing?

I know there’s lots of intangible stuff. I have friends and family and cats that would all miss me. But I haven’t made much of a dent in the universe otherwise. And thinking about dying without something surviving beyond me is terrifying. Disappearing into a void, memories and all, being forgotten.. that’s the shit that fuels my nightmares.

Set aside that I’ve not really defined what I’d want in a legacy and that many of my favorite writers and artists didn’t start making their dent until well after 35. So, it’s not like I’m out of time. Just… being potentially half way through? Man… that gives me chills.

Remember that you have to die

You waste time as if it was a limitless resource, when any moment you spend on someone else or some matter is potentially your last. You possess a fear that is all too human but have the boundless desires of a god. You will hear many men say: “When I’m fifty I’ll slow down; when I’m sixty, I’ll be ready for retirement.” But what guarantee, pray, do you have that your life will last longer? Who is going to make sure your life plays out just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to save for yourself only the last part of your life, and to set aside for knowledge only that time which can’t be spent on making money?

It is too late to begin living life just as it is ending! What stubborn denial of mortality to delay dreams to after your fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to plan on starting your life at a point that not everyone gets to.

A think a lot of the things I’ve been doing at Wrestling With Franklin1 orbits that which the Stoics defined centuries ago. Much of what I’m trying to do by cultivating virtue is about doing as much as I can with what ever amount of time I have available.

But it’s all about ensuring that I’m here more and there’s more here, whatever that ends up being.

It’s vaguely morbid but I bought the medallion in the pictures as a reminder, like it was taught by the Stoics, that death comes to anyone. And it isn’t predictable. Maybe it will remind me to focus and create more things, spend more time with people, do more with what I’ve got.

I don’t know what all that means or where I need to go in order to feel satisfied with what I do every day, let’s alone what I’ll need to do to ensure the next years matter, the next decades matter, the rest of my life matters.

These are just the things that’ve been rattling through my head since the 5th.

Artifacts made with @dayoneapp

The first two months.

In July of 2012, a few days before my 30th birthday, I downloaded a little app called Day One onto my iPad. At the time, it was one of very few applications designed specifically for journaling in the App Store. The interface was clean, simple, and inviting. I didn’t use it too much that first month but took to it in August after API found a tool online that would pull in additional things like Foursquare, Instagram, and Twitter.

I’ve been mediocre at keeing a handwritten journal for extended periods. With my handwriting being illegible, and only serviceable after atively working on it for a while now, I can’t actually read everything I’ve put to paper. The internet really changed that for me. I’ve written in journals on and off for years, regularly writing about myself ever since Livejournal was a thing in college. I spent something like a decade of my life on that service which, when I exported it all a few years ago, ended at about 6000 pages when done.

After linking Day One to various services and seeing all the natural media I produced in one place, I was hooked. You can see the first two months of Day One. I hit my stride in August of 2012. Funnily enough, my writing style still sounds like I’m writing for an audience. I guess nearly 2 decades builds some habits?

An excerpt from my first written entry in Day One:

I feel like refried beans. In refried beans, beans are cooked and mashed and drained of excess liquid. They are then stirred, potentially reconstituted with chicken stock, and fried over a hot pan in lard. The process leaves them whipped, pasty like the inside of a hangover in the desert. Sticky. Dry. Paste.

I feel like refried beans.

Over the years the application got new APIs here, a little integration there, but kept writing entries the easiest thing you could do. And I wrote. A lot. It’s been 1773 days since I downloaded it, with 2008 discrete entries and 1430 photos. 50 of those entries and 39 photos came from the two weeks in Chicago last year when my dad died.

It was that point where I went searching for ways to make manifest that particular journal. Though it was an absolutely terrible event, I knew I wanted something of who I was then to survive for some future me to see. I was vulnerable in a way I don’t think I ever truly am when writing for the internet. Those attempts failed, though, because of how hard it is to move one data format to another, format it, and then print it with anything resembling readable layout.

But. Last week Bloom Built added a print feature to Day One.

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To say I was excited is… insufficient… evem r especially because of the specific journal I wanted from last year. I have 5 years of journaling in that application. Thousands of pages. And the thought of laying out all of those pages, even a year at a time, is overwhelming. Hours and hours of work.

Day One turned that process into just minutes of effort.

The workflow to create the books is as easy as writing entries. You choose the journals, choose the year, create the cover art and vital statistics, and it does the rest. You upload the files, pay right on your device, and a week later you receive your life, perfect bound, and in vivid color.

They are wonderful. Hefty, smooth pages. Rich color. Beautiful and sturdy covers. And remarkably compact conidering that each of those books is about 400 pages.

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I’m just so thrilled with these that I ordered the last two year’s worth of journals - 4 books in total (I just ordered the second half of last year, I didn’t notice it got split into two) equaling about 1600 pages across all of my journals. Over the next few months I’m going to print the entirety of my journal. 5 years worth of personal history - the good, the bad, and the unedited.

Those 50 entries from Februray 2016 are still pretty raw. I read through them, hard as they were, and am still grateful of what time I had with dad then adn that I had the grit to write all the awful things in my head. And the silly things. And the frightened things. Because that was all me adn that was the last bit he dn I shared.

So… if you’re looking for a way to journal better but don’t want to lose the artifact you get at the end of a full notebook, this is a pretty darn good option. That t can tue together everything in your digitral life is nice.

But it’s the open page where you can just be is worth it in any form you can take.

Read about the application here: Day One

A wild selfie appears!

And I’m even smiling. Ish. Well. Smirking?