On Record Keeping

I'm reminded of something Cameron from LRT said when we were camping almost a year ago in Utah, he said he was teaching himself to code and that he had made a very simple program to organize or categorize simple text files, or something similar. He said he had set himself the goal of writing down 27 ideas every day and if I recall, he would input the ideas into this little program to use, for, well I'm not sure. Maybe that's the questions I should be asking. 

Instead I find myself constantly trying to do something similar, making a collection of ideas. I guess by "trying" I mean I think about it in a borderline compulsive way and then do nothing about it. I'm not quite sure what the value of it would be, but I think it's related to a similar drive I have to document, categorize, and compile other elements of my life. 

Lately that's been music. I'm trying to mark the albums I've listened to recently as one would kairns on a path. There's an instagram page I follow to that does something similar, adding the picture of the album to their page with a few details. The "what I've been listening to" section of this thing is my attempt to do that, but so far it's been pretty sparse. It's hard to hunt down the images, etc. Last FM is a similar tool I've found, and that one is passive and easy. I mean, it literally just makes a backlog of all the music you listen to and then runs stats on them? I love it. I love statistics especially when they're about me, which sounds very self righteous I know, but hey I think it's fascinating. 

Another thing I've become very interested in through by purchase of a FitBit is health stats. When I wake up I check my phone  to see how well I slept. This morning, I woke up and felt good! That perfect tangled in blankets cool air soft bones kind of morning feeling that makes you want to stretch. But, I checked my phone and it informed me that actually I had a pathetic score of 60-70 something and I only actually slept for about 6.5 hours! This made me feel that actually I had misdiagnosed my good sleep and my feeling good was somehow undeserved. I can't tell if this is a good or a bad thing, by instinct is that it's a bad thing, but time will tell. 
    The same goes for other data, active minutes, heart rate, the like. Sometimes I check my resting heart rate according to this smart watch and find it's gone well up recently, and part of me uses that information to indicate I should maybe exercise more? Could it be stress? and part of me wonders what that germ of information might be doing to by subconscious, again, for better or worse I can't really say. 

The most useful and productive ways to use that compulsion to document and eventually reflect on statistically the events and media that make up my life is to compare what the numbers say my experience is to what my memory of it was. Today for example, I decided to reign in the amount of time I spent mixing a song, because it was nice out and I had to get some other clerical work done. I was quite startled when the 30 minutes were up to quickly, and I was reminded of the profound effects of time dilation. 

I guess that's kind of a moot point, that your perception of time changes. That's beyond common knowledge. Maybe a better example is a few days ago, when I spent most of this rainy Sunday in my living room (can I call it that? what is that room) making art and listening to music. It took a long time, and toward the end of the day I got up and went for a long long bike ride in the rain. It was lovely in many regards, but I especially loved the ongoing radio of music that didn't stop all day. I liked it so much I decided I would bottle it in a playlist, and I went to my Last FM to look up each of the songs last night and found that there were actually fewer than I expected. Admittedly it was still like 50 or 60 songs, which if the average song is about 3 minutes would come out to a few hours, but still, my perception while listening was of a long and varied playlist being actively curated each new track a surprise and a totally new chapter of small memory being written over the curvature of time. 
    I found when looking back at it though that my perception of the music, not just the time spent listening, but the variety of the "shuffle" (Spotify's algorithm) wasn't as, sublime, or divinely inspired as it had seemed? I guess I kind of saw, looking at the list of about 50 decently related songs based off Mid-Air Thief radio was about what I'd expect, in a derivative sort of way? Maybe not, but my perception of it was much more grandiose and would have remained that way had I not used to a tool like Last FM to reexamine the process. 

That's what I mean when I say comparing the numbers to my experience. From tracking my GPS on a bike ride, to my sleep, to my music preferences, I can note the following things: 

• I like to track the minutiae of my life
• Tracking these things leads to insights I would not otherwise have 
• The process of tracking minutia in my life alters them and my experience of them
• I don't like the implications of the biofeedback I get from this 
• I not only do it anyway, I think the pros of tracking these things out-weight the cons 

That being said, I must play the dissenters opinion offered in point number 4, which is to say, this strikes me as an unnatural thing to do. 

Not unnatural among other people today, or even in recent history, and not really unnatural in terms of the very human need to make sense of things and organize things, I guess I just feel like in general, a life geared towards such detail orientation and attention to minutiae is one needless micromanaged. 

It's like going for a walk in the woods and watching your feet the whole time. Sure, you'd say "look! I've noticed my right foots tends to lead when stepping up on a root! I think I should consciously try to use my left foot more often to balance them out more" or something like that. Pointing out, of course that "how could it be bad to know your tendencies better and respond to them?. Obviously, I agree with that sentiment largely because it seems like it is some kind of objective truth, and I tend to really like those. Furthermore I could argue that by consciously using my left foot more to step up on roots, I would possibly be preventing a future injury I might incur as a result of underusing that foot, or by not using it when needed knowing my right foot preference. The analogy begins to break down, but you get the point. 

    I guess my objection is that it's kind of a waste of time, ultimately to worry about these things even a little bit because it lends itself to the fundamental idea that you can control acts of random chance. I'm reluctant to admit that my "objective noticing" is actually providing such meaningful insight as to enhance my life beyond where it otherwise would have been. 
    For all the time I might spend tracking heart rate data, sleep, music, the pictures I take, the phone calls I had, the clippings of paper I save, is the rediscovery of that thing, or it's examination really going to improve my life in the future at all? Within reason, absolutely, I don't mean to argue that finding that old love note in your files won't fill you with a wonderful scent of nostalgia that was absolutely worth hauling it across multiple state lines and in and out of apartments for 10 years is UNWORTHY, or WON'T improve your life, just like how noticing how many hours you spent "awake" in the night according to your heart monitor can absolutely help you to reevaluate your caffeine intake the next day if you so choose (I do not so choose). I think keeping track of some things is valuable, but the effort in, benefit out is tricky and requires some practice and attention itself. 

The more fundamental question I think this gets at for me is one of memory or living in the present. There's a part of me that really thinks, fearfully, that one day I'll be on my deathbed or hit on my bike in traffic bleeding irrevocably out or fading quietly into the twilight that the main thing, the MAIN thing I will be concerned about before death is not the sum total of good I've done but simply what my most profound memories, collectively or individual are. Already I know this is absurd, because at the moment of death I'm sure flipping through your mental rolodex of good times is the last thing on your mind, so I must mean instead I'm afraid of the necessity of memory to ward off the fear of death when it draws near, of if my sanity was truly challenged, etc. This part of me that puts such value in memories to stand it up to death or my own psyche thinks that, in a very real neurological sense memories are all I'm made up of. 

It reminds me of the thought I sometimes have, that if you could watch a human from a steady-cam microscope time lapse, watch every particle go into and then back out of their body for their whole lives sped up to some absurd speed as they wafted all over the planet, that you would see a sort of fuzzy holographic looking shape, one that's really just part of a stream of particles, constantly being replaced. They'd look like a river, or a steam sculpture, or if you really sped things up, a very interesting bit or organic turbulence. (I find it particularly interesting that tattoos are actually among the longest lived particles in your body especially on the outside, making them in some very abstract way in this scenario more permanent than the skin they're embedded in. If you only really gauged a particles "belonging" to a particular cloud of matter by how long it remained in that cloud, I think tattoos would win out over skin, stomach lining, even muscle and some nervous tissue...). 

The idea that "all I am is my memories" is probably a big part of why I take such pleasure in reviewing old notes, letters, instagram photos, and the like. Just reveling in nostalgia is indulgent and rewarding itself, but sometimes I find I also derive some value and meaning by way of my identity, and how I view myself. Remembering what I used to think about when that picture was taken, who I was seeing, where I lived, so many memories can be locked up in a little scrap of evidence and the greater of a distance I am from that, the more odd and profound it gets to me. It's almost like a different person, but it's not. It's still me, and more importantly that person I find locked up in the memory knows things I don't, or at least knows things I forget. Maybe, there's something I used to know that makes me the way I am today, or that was once useful and now isn't, or that could be if only I remembered. 
    It goes without saying that the prevalent nature of the universe and therefore of the mind is to change, and so I feel a good bit silly in pointing out again and again that the past is gone and was different, unattainable,  so on and so forth.  It seems like a given that memories will fade, the old you will go away, and the new you is not here to stay, so why try to combat that by documenting, recording songs, writing letters, taking pictures? It seems to defy the nature of things, and makes me wonder if that isn't making a mockery of the worlds not-so-subtle suggestion to let things in the past fade away. Trying to provide evidence for my existence is largely futile in the grand scheme, so it must have the root of its value on a more human scale. 

With my head out of the clouds, I can admit that for human beings today and for all time providing evidence for your own existence is so basic an urge that I'm sure every self aware being in history has been concerned with it at some point. Fond memories, nostalgia, things that happened that make you smile are indelible part of the human experience and to think that some new appendage of this desire to remember is somehow unnatural is just not true. 
    I think what the dissenting opinion in me is trying to say is that, living in the present is a more valuable use of your time always. It's always more prudent, and rewarding, and useful and so on and so forth live in the now and to forget the past, after all, the nature of the universe is change yadda yadda. But I can't tell if that truth is meant to be taken so literally or to be acted upon so completely. 

If I truly were to forsake the past and only live in the now I would have a life without the scaffolding of identity I'm used to. Is that a good thing? The spiritual part of me that wants to be present says, between the earth forming and blowing up being absolutely present kind of matters as much as anything so go for that. But the practical, human part of me says I know having an identity matters a lot, or at least I think I know, at the very least everyone else is living this way and it's important for me to live the context I find myself in regardless of the possible presence of a more fundamental truth. 

Very quickly these notions devolve into cosmic comparisons that are too heady to be useful to me I think. Maybe not, I just know as myself once I get up to these kind of unknowable peaks the truth seems more and more far away, more and more the same color in this light, and it kind of doesn't matter. 

I think living authentically boils down to practicing what a positive reflection looks like. Reflect often, objectively (or artistically) document what's going on around you as the time goes by whenever you want to, but don't do so at the expense of your future self. It's impossible to have an "always" rule for which moment is better, but if you take the time to note which elements of the past are helping you to reduce human suffering, be mindful, and appreciate the world around you, then you will find reward in them. Probably, I'll do a kajillion different versions of documentation in my life and some of them I'll regret, and others will be among the most profound achievements in life. There's kind of no way around that, and that's a good thing. Music, is recorded, letters, notes, clothes, water bottles, things people said to you, that one day you said you'd never forget, the first kiss you did right away, the sunsets never photographed, the sounds never heard, clouds no one looked up at, all of these things will be and won't be and which you want to bottle up and try and save only matters if you want it to. 

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