Days and days recorded.

I finally broke down and bought a proper daytimer today – the kind with a space to write in appointments by the hour – after frustrating myself trying to fit everything into the small agenda I got for free through work at Christmastime. I haven’t really used a daytimer since university, having found it quite acceptable since then to track dates in my head with the occasional scratch on the wall calendar. But lately, well, it’s just gotten a bit out of hand what with the constant travel and meetings and the blessing of a social life. Even when I can remember dates, I forget what hotel I am supposed to be at this time, when I’m due at the airport or what restaurant I’m meeting a friend at for dinner.

The last three weeks have actually been quite relaxing for me as I’ve been in Vancouver without too many responsibilities, and had three weekends with only fun things scheduled. This, of course, can only go on so long. According to my new daytimer, all this relaxing ends exactly this Thursday and probably won’t begin again until mid-June.

I’m calmed by the daytimer in some way, even though the pages fill up as often as my phone rings. All emotion stripped down to the basic facts of when and who noted beside the appropriate time on the correct days. Days of appointments & meetings, planes taken, movies watched, cardio workouts fulfilled, and dinners eaten in nice restaurants, perhaps even elections won (or lost), and speeches made. How simple it looks spread across the pages of this new agenda, so tidy the black ink that notes each of these events. How neat the words that say “Darren’s hearing” underneath the location – Eugene, Oregon. The demarcation of my next flight to Ottawa holds no indication of whether or not my plane will land at all, or whether our meetings there will be any sort of success. It is simply a record of location and time, the emotional filling in of these things left completely to memory. How simple it looks, this life! I can do this, no problem!

And again, as I so often ask these days – is this one really my life? Are these responsibilities mine? Did I actually have those experiences? The ink in my journal contains them, and so they must be mine, just as the simple recording of facts in the daytimer indicates part of who I am becoming. Artifacts of the minor moments that accumulate to make the sum.