Writing for the Future

I am 48 years old and my children are 9 and 6. If you do a little math, you'll quickly see I will be 64 when the youngest is 22 and finishing up her college years. Considering my father died of a heart attack after many years of daily insulin injections at the age of 59, I am starting to feel the need to record my "history" somewhere.

The somewhere is the thing, I've thought about creating a private website, but when my children are ready to read it, will the technology to "read it" still be current? Will my files be as easy to read as the Multimate or Appleworks files I created in 91 to 94. While I may have the old 5.25 inch disks, I no longer have the software, the hardware (5.25 in drive) or any other way of reading files which are only 11 to 14 years old. It really is hard to believe the technology of the web and personal computing have come so far in so short a time.

So I guess you are starting to see why I am concerned. Will the CD-Rom I write today, still be usable in another 12 years? When I was saving files to a 5.25 inch disk, I never thought about their eventual obsolesce. I still have cassette tapes, but no cassette player. I have old record albums, but the turntable is still packed in boxes in the garage.

But I have books from the early 1900's, one from 1917 which I can still read if I want too. I do have to be careful with it, as the pages are brittle and hard, but the book is readable. So you can see where I am going here, I'm starting to write my life story in a Journal. Now I am on a quest to find the right Journal. It must be acid free, and of generous size to allow for a lot of writing, remember I'm 48 and therefore have many years to write about.

Currently I am leaning toward this journal in the 11x8.5 size. I learned about this journal and others from this article by Mike Shea.

With the journal in hand, now to find time to write, attempt to improve my penmanship so my children will be able to read it and then "just do it".

As I progress in this project I will post future articles about my progress and the things I learn about the materials used and the process I follow in getting "my humble story" written.