Keeping Records

 It is now Summer, and my first academic year as a full-time teacher is over.  In a lot of ways, I am extremely relieved because it was exhausting at times, but I will miss some of my students.  They have progressed onto their senior year now though, so I more than likely will be seeing them around next year though.  Also, with the prospect of new curriculum and other things, I am thinking next year will be smoother than this past year was, and therefore there may be much to look forward to.  However, I don't want to talk about work now - this is Summer break, so I need to decompress and relax, catching up on some things I need to catch up on. Let's start that now. 

Thinking more about Dr. Whitehead's box lesson I shared earlier, I have been inspired to pick up where I left off in my journal.  I have been journaling for about 29 years now, and the thing about that is that there are times when one's thoughts are really lucid and I can write 20 pages in a short time, and then there are long periods when I don't write at all.  I wrote my first journal entry in several months just a couple of days ago, and thinking about that, I wanted to talk some about what my plans are.

Since the mid-1990s, I have had two things simultaneously going at once.  The first is a regular journal.  In a bin just to my right here at my desk in my room, there are about 35 volumes of that journal.  Some are large beautifully-bound books, others are small spiral-bound notebooks.  But all contain most of my thoughts for the past 30 or so years.  A journal is a good outlet to talk about those things that often we cannot articulate to others or even do so in our thoughts, as if you are like me often your mind is racing so fast that 50,000 things are going through it at once and it is a little hard to sort out.  One other thing I have done over the years which is related to this is what is called self-directed speech - that means I talk to myself.  In the past, a person doing that would have been thought as being one drumstick short of a chicken bucket, but other studies of it suggest that there are benefits to talking to yourself, and I guess that sort of makes me a pioneer.  My journals are more or less my written editions of those vocalized thoughts over the years, but in that regard I have some regrets.  One of those is that I really should have started journaling sooner - had I taken it up when I was either in my teens or even as young as sixth grade, I think I would have had a more comprehensive record of things.  However two things preclude that.  I already have a huge number of volumes to carry around whenever I have to move somewhere new, and could you imagine the number those would be if I had started earlier!  Second, in my younger years I had an issue with being consistent - I would start something and then it would fall by the wayside.  Over the years I have improved in that regard, but a lot was wasted by inconsistency and procrastination that maybe would have made a huge difference.  Therefore, what I have tried to do is to integrate things I think about from the past into my journal entries now, and that seems to also help me have more clarity.  But, if I were to give advice to younger generations, I would still encourage them to start journaling earlier, because one thing a personal journal does is it gives a rich reservoir of material for other things later, and it does help one improve written communication.  It also serves as a historical record too, as in those journals you can preserve family stories as they come to mind and other things.  In essence, the journal becomes a tangible expression of your own thoughts, and it can be very rich in what it will eventually contain.  To that regard, I also recommend using it to write down dreams you have and other things, as I can attest to the fact that dreams are significant - not everything you dream at night is a result of too much pepperoni on that last slice of pizza you ate before bed, because your dreams can be windows to your own inner self as well as also divine messages - God has used dreams since the creation of mankind to communicate with us, and if a symbol or something else sticks out in a dream, it is a sure sign to pay attention because it might be telling you something.  Any rate, in some cases the journals can lead to other more ambitious projects, and I want to talk about the second thing now. 

I have always wanted to write down my own life story, as I feel that it needs to be preserved.  So, since about the mid-1990s, I have been doing just that.  The original impetus for this evolved from journaling back in 1996, when in a discussion with Mom at the house one day in Lakeland, FL, we were talking about our old dog Jill.  For some reason, that conversation with Mom encouraged me to start writing my journal, and only a few weeks prior I had been doing so.  After that conversation, I decided it was time to maybe tell my own story and for about two or three years I essentially wrote the first draft of it in my first journal entries.  Around 2006 or so however, I decided that the life story project deserved its own volume, so I began extracting what I had written in my journals and started to put them into other books, and that project is still ongoing.  At this point, my entire story - beginning with just before my birth until the end of last year - comprises about seven volumes of handwritten script.  I add a new section now at the end of every year to update it, and just finished last week updating 2024 and all that went on then.  So, what are the ultimate objectives and finished product of all this?  That is where we are going now. 

The life story project is something I want to continue until about my 60th birthday, at which point I will start to typeset all that into a manuscript and plan on getting it bound.  That means about 5 more years of working on it.  Now that my education is finished (with the exception of a short certification program I am going to start next week) I can begin to plan for a more summative agenda of my work, and as I do so I am constantly keeping track of and updating information.  Although my written volumes are a skeleton, the finished product will have a lot more information as it will be notated, and I also want to contain it all in two volumes.  The first volume will be a comprehensive family history going back to as far as I can go with it, and it will take substantive more work as a lot of annotation will be needed.  I have a shelf full now of family history volumes, county and state histories, and other resources which will aid in that aspect of the project.  The second volume is my personal story, which may even encompass two volumes once I add in the annotations and other material I want to add.  Provided my health stays good and I am able to do so, I want to have those bound and printed by the time I am 70, and in the last volume I will do a brief update of myself up until that time.  As the last surviving member of my direct family line, I take this as a very important responsibility because it is my own history, as well as being something that other family researchers can use as a tool.  I am quite sure it will have its share of differing opinions once it is read, and that is OK - to the critics, I say this; if you don't like my interpretation of events, then write your own, OK?  Critics are a dime a dozen, and the problem with critics as far a genealogy and life stories are concerned is that they think their own version of events is infallible, and God forbid someone present a different perspective.  What they fail to recognize though is that perspective plays a role, and in all honesty there are things in other family histories I differ with too, but I still value their work and I just use the information they have provided to tell my own story.  The underlying facts that an event happened will always be indisputable, but the interpretation of those facts are what makes the story unique.  In all honesty, two different interpretations of the event are not necessarily wrong either - it just means the event is seen from different perspectives.  The event is the same, but the experience may show it at different angles.  As long as people understand that, then it makes the research even more exciting.  My perspective on my own story and my findings on my family history is simply that - it is mine.  If you have something different, then you are welcome to write your own.  And, I would be excited to read yours too, and although I may not agree with some of your observations necessarily, I still appreciate the lens through which you viewed the same event.  

Another thing that evolved out of my journaling is blogging.  For about 15 years now, I have had a pretty consistent blogging project.  At one time, I maintained three blogs as those who have read my material know, but at this juncture I am exploring ways to consolidate everything into one site so it is easier to manage.  One important aspect of blogging that I have taken advantage of is the ability to publish your own posts in bound volumes.  I try to create a "blog book" every year in all honesty, and so far I have managed to compile every blog post into roughly 12 volumes at present.  That way, there is a further preservation of a written record of one's work in case a blog site goes down or something else happens.  Like my journaling and other projects though, I plan on only keeping regular blogs until my 60th birthday, at which time I will close out these pages and maybe create a website that contains all my work for future reference to anyone who enjoys reading these random ramblings I post.  I am exploring that option now, and want to briefly talk about that.

I will reach my 60th birthday in 4 1/2 years - November 2029.  In 2030 at some point, I am going to create a website for all my blog posts that will be more professional-looking and will be easily searchable and handy for someone to peruse.  I also plan on something else with that site - I am going to make the volumes of my past blogs available for sale, and plan on having a store where they could be purchased.  At that point, I am going beyond blogging to something different.  Some other books will be joining that inventory as well - I am going to publish books of Bible study guides, a cookbook, and a few other items based on the material in the blogs so that I can have a more concise way of sharing particular information with others.  The one reason I am wanting to end blogging, journaling, etc., in 2029 is because I want to focus on editing and enhancing previous material into separate books.  The Genesis study will be one of those, as there is a lot to put into that yet.  If you recall from my SPT blog, the Genesis study was a 37-part series I had originally used to teach an adult Bible study at an Anglican parish I attended some years back.  Since doing that study, a LOT more research material has come available, and I want to redo those in their own book so they can be a resource for teaching others.  It is a unique study on Genesis in that it is coming from the perspective of a Catholic Christian who also believes in both Biblical Creation (as a theological position) and Intelligent Design (from a more scientific perspective).  In this regard, that study will be packed with a lot of rich material that will enlighten others.   I also plan on doing my own book on spiritual abuse too - I am a survivor of that from a cult-like Pentecostal church in Alabama, and I feel many people could benefit from a resource like that too.  I am currently in research with that and will be doing a series of articles here soon on it once I get all my information organized.  And, I want to talk about that particular interest now.

Spiritual abuse is a silent malady that happens in so many places, and it is serious in that it imperils the spiritual lives of many vulnerable people.  After my experience just over 30 years ago under a very abusive pastor in a Pentecostal church, I began reading up on this as a thing, which to my relief I found out that it was.  Obviously, the first place to start would be Ronald Enroth's work - his book Churches That Abuse which was published in 1991 is a life-changing resource for me, and I still find it very valuable today.  Since Enroth's pioneering work, other books on the topic began emerging - Enroth himself wrote a second volume entitled Recovering from Churches that Abuse, and a few other ones include The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen, which was published in 2005.   Others I have come across include In the House of Friends by Kenneth Garrett (published in 2020) and Spiritual Abuse Recovery by Barbara Orlowski (published in 2010), and there are others as well. The problem with spiritual abuse is that it empowers enemies of Christianity to justify their attacks on it, and it also blurs the line between orthodox theology and cultic practices, which in itself causes a crapload of confusion.  However, it is possible to still remain a sound Christian yet expose abuse in churches, and that is what I hope to do.  If Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and even some traditional Catholics would understand how to stay faithful without setting unnecessary boundaries on their fellow Christians, spiritual abuse would be curbed in many circumstances.  I already have published a book of my own that contains some of my experience called Staying the Course in the Storm, but it deals with many other things besides spiritual abuse.  It contains perspectives on life I have noticed, as well as how I have dealt with and come to terms with different situations.  When I eventually get my new website up and running, I will make this available for sale too, but if you want one sooner, please feel free to write and I will hook you up with the way to obtain one. 

I have rambled about a lot of things today, as a lot was on my mind, but it felt refreshing to do so as I tend to have more clarity myself after doing so.  Thanks again for allowing me to pontificate, and will see you next time!