I do.

I’m the right age to have had an analogue childhood and digital teenage life.

A nostalgic 80s, where things like house phones were still not common place, and then everything rapidly changing through the 90s and later, to the point now where we have all the worlds knowledge in a device in our pocket.

I’m wary, I know I could indulge in the nostalgia, a wonderful haze of analogue memories. Big blocky computers with giant floppy disks, loading computer games via cassette tape, excitement when the phone rings, and the joys of post.

There’s always that temptation, to think of times before ‘The Internet’ as generically better. How fun was post, when it wasn’t always just bills? How exciting was a phone call when you barely communicated with folks you didn’t see each day. How simple was it all when you didn’t know what was happening beyond your local horizon. How disconnected it was when you needed support.

I love a odd wonder into melancholia. It’s like a really rich pudding, something to savour and enjoy. But not something one should take too much of.

I do remember a time before the internet, and I miss some of it. Cameras that didn’t need to load and were litterally point & click, days without being contacted, post that was fun.

Jumping to conclusions? Talking shit about myself? Drinking coffee.

There’s a line in Alien 3. “We tolerate even the intolerable.”

And really, when I look at all the things I’ve done in my life. Tolerating the intolerable is probably what I’m really good at.

I’ve completed several marathons. I would not recommend it.

I’ve worked for some really shitty companies, in some really shitty industries.

I’ve had some really obnoxious clients / guests / acts / family talk to me like crap.

Sometimes I even, for a short while, believed it.

“and still like dirt, I rise.”

I hoard things. I collect things. Scraps, tickets, stickers, bits and pieces. Detritus.

The live in boxes and baskets. Sandwiched between pages of whatever I was reading or stashed in wallets and pockets of bags.

When I find them I remember where I picked them up, and I hold them dear. Like little snapshots of emotions.

Then I feel guilty I haven’t scrapbooked them or kept them safe. They are dear to me, honest. These bits and scraps just look like discarded rubbish.

I don’t know if it’s a legacy, but I always wanted to leave stacks of notebooks behind when I’m gone.

Like Daniel Jackson from Stargate, stacks of notes and information. Notebooks that are a mix of journal and research. Filled with weird drawings and esoteric knowledge.

It’s more likely I’ll leave half completed calendars, and books with 10 pages of chicken scratchings. My children will burn it all and be glad they don’t have to read the mundane ramblings of th parent.

I did once read, that historians loved mundane journals, they give explanations to what daily life would have been. To people studying the past those boring details are golden, explanations of what is obvious now, but fallen out of common knowledge cannot be found anywhere other than these journals.

So my legacy might be mundane details in too many scrappy note pages, but when I die I’ll rest hopeful that there are surprises in the pages, but content that someone will find details helpful in the future.