Just WHEN will all be revealed?

Interestingly enough, I started logging before anyone was blogging.

I was in a volunteer position (called an "internship") at a post-Bubble internet start-up that produced online newscasts covering the foreign currency exchange market. I was indeed a webcaster long before YouTube was let out of Pandora's Box and into the hearts of billions of bored housewives, curious pre-teens and giggling stoner college kids.

Since it was a start-up, we had to research the news stories on one computer, then email it to ourselves and pull it up on another computer connected to the camera and webcast teleprompter software. It was kind of cool, if not clunky, and right at the start, I realized I needed a way to organize and track the broadcasts I'd done, so I kept my "Mister Blister's Daily Log for [insert date here]" that included a short summary of what I'd learned that day and the files/webcasts I'd uploaded. (Except I wasn't called Mister Blister yet; forgive the artistic license.)

And if there's one thing that someone who's obsessive, compulsive - or even both, a nasty combination - needs, it's structure, and something to grasp onto. So in 2005 when I moved from a more nomadic career to a corporate version of indentured servitude, I kept my little Daily Log going. It allowed me to laugh, to cry, to bitch, to moan, to figure out some deeper questions, and all-around feel quite human.

Since I'd followed a very non-traditional career path, and most people were more confused by me than they knew what to do with, these Logs also helped me keep my sanity.

But over time, they grew to overcome me. I'd be late for sports practice, or dinner with a friend, or just getting the hell out of the office, and I'd compulsively *have* to at least make notes about the day so I could send my Daily Log first thing the next morning. I pretended I was being practical and thinking of the future by including useful bits of information like:
- when I started my day
- when I ended my day
- what tasks I accomplished
- who I had meetings with
- how many emails were in my Inbox
- how much I weighed that morning
- what color socks I wore

because loving to work with data in addition to using people skills to help others become more United, I wanted to have a body of data I could play around with, just in my spare time. (And no, I didn't really keep track of what color socks I wore - shame on you for thinking I was that bad.)

But it did provide me an opportunity to do something creative, even if it was just for myself. That is me and my future self, who I imagined would read back in ten years' time about how I tortured myself over the most mundane things, like a five-year old who didn't get the green lollipop at the dentist and was instead stuck with the purple one. Well, kind of like that. More like, "I had such a great idea for a fun graphic on this PowerPoint presentation, and my boss made me take it out, leaving the presentation dull and lifeless" like Shirley MacLaine without her other selves. But it went on and on compulsively every day, until I had calluses on my typing fingers and blisters on my computer-screen-staring retinas.

So I had to quit, cold turkey. It was terrible. But on August 11, 2009, I wrote my last-ever "Work Log for 2009/08/11". And it gets even worse - I didn't even send it for a week. Things were getting so soul-draining at work, that I was out sick for almost a week, and didn't actually send it until (gasp) August 19th. But at last I was free to live my life, unshackled by the need to plead to my future self.

Little did I realize it was the beginning of a downward spiral leading to where I am today.

For more, stay tuned, oh faithful reader!

P.S. so Just WHEN will all be revealed? All in due time through these blog posts, maybe once a day, maybe once a night, maybe once a month. Stay tuned, oh faithf-- awww, cripes, I already said that.