I almost never remember anything I write. Wether it’s this blog or a letter or something for work about five minutes after it leaves my brain and lands on the page, any shadow of it has evaporated from my memory. This goes for jokes too, and if not anecdotes, then who I told the stories to, and in what order. 

This has always been the case, ever since I can remember. 

Perhaps the earliest memory of this is when in high school a few friends reminisced about a funny joke I had told. It was something about the vagina monologues, if I recall. I have a far clearer memory of being reminded of the joke than I do of telling it in the first place. Obviously that’s because of the repetition. I tell loads of jokes on a daily basis and unless I’m reminded it sort of falls to the fog of memory. 

What I find interesting is that other people remembered it when I didn’t. I’d imagine that’s because while any given person has a full 18 hours of memories about themselves, they only have a few jokes and jabs from me. It’s easier to remember a gaff or two than every single joke told by a person throughout the day. 

But writings aren’t words. While I write a lot, between work, my hobbies, and this blog, it’s a heck of a lot less than the words I speak. 

In the end I think it’s nice. 
When a good friend who I don’t see nearly enough sent me a quote from my own blog I got to appreciate it for a moment before I realized it was something I had written myself. That might be prideful, but there was also a degree of, what kinda nerdy nonsense is this, judgment that I bring to anything I read. I am not free of such snap judgments, even of my anonymous self.

It’s almost a little bit like photography. 
You make expose the image at the moment, develop the film, work the dark room, make a print, and share it. These are all recursive moments whee you get to enjoy and enjoy again the image you’ve made. Each time it’s different. While I doubt you’ve forgotten the image and the experience of making it, there is, at least in my experience, a certain thrill to seeing things from a fresh angle. 

Perhaps in a few months or a few years I’ll look back at this blog and select a few posts or a few lines of a few posts that I like and put it together into a more complete publication. Then the blog itself will become a contact sheet that I get to mark up. 

Contact sheets are beautiful in their own right. 
Just look at that one Magnum book.