40 Topics, 40 Days, 40 Years Old: Final Thoughts

As I explained at length in topic 27, "Papers and Zines and Blogs", this series of posts was inspired by a desire to return to more personal writing in my journal. Although I intended to come up with the complete list of topics before I started writing, I spent some time thinking about possible topics but didn't get around to setting down a whole list. Initially, I simply thought I'd have a diverse set of topics with no particular organization, but as I started writing it made sense to begin with topics from my earliest years, and inevitably I came to structure the series chronologically, with each topic more or less corresponding in order to my age. 

As a result, I dropped some prospective topics, and never fit in some others that I'd have liked to discuss. After I'd already started writing the series, I finally made a draft list of topics to plan ahead. These are the topics I dropped or changed:

• Vision—getting glasses and my eyesight issues
• Cowardly Lion—acting in the school play in sixth grade, and again in eighth grade
• NHYO—became "Student Orchestras", as I realized there was more to cover
• Brains—was effectively replaced by two entries, "Geek" and "Most Likely to Succeed"
• Driving—how and why I enjoy driving, and driving-related experiences
• The Faire—attending King Richard's Faire every year from 1988 until 2001

And these are a few other topics I considered:

• Names and Nicknames—what I've called myself, what others have called me
• Sex and Sexuality—no shocking revelations or details, just how I feel about it
• Walking and Bicycling—activities I've done for fun that also helped me get to know my home cities very well

I may yet write about some of these topics in the future.

Writing this series was occasionally challenging in surprising ways. Sometimes I had to think a while about how to get into a topic, other times I had to work to stay focused and not ramble on for pages. Sometimes it was harder to remember details than I expected. The closer I got to the present, the more difficult I found it to write about some topics, because they were things I'd been spending lots of time thinking about, and sometimes writing about, already, and I felt I was just repeating myself. Or I was concerned about saying too much and somehow putting myself in a bad position, in particular with posts about work and about my efforts to find romance—the concern that led me to stop making personal posts in the first place.

I enjoyed writing this series very much, and I'm pleased and grateful that some of you let me know you were reading along and enjoying it too. Thanks for your comments and support.