Dump > Supermarket > Gallery

OK, I have things to do.
I have to write these things down.
So I remember them.
And can carry them with me.
I have a PDA.
I am scared or losing it.
Or breaking it.
Plus, this is sometimes easier.

I make lists. I have done for years. I've done it for a long, long time. At work, at home, at school, at Uni, personal, private, public. It all went on lists. It still goes on lists. Stuff to do, things to complete, consider, purchase, remember, keep.

Despite the fact I make the lists, a lot of the stuff doesn't get done. Procrastination. Maybe I just like making lists. Perhaps I should have been an archivist of some sort? Anyway, I have started to photograph the index cards I keep the lists on. The lists on the cards sometimes get transposed onto the PDA, sometimes they don't, sometimes vice-versa, it's a bit haphazard to be honest.
Never enough time is there? Maybe I should spend less of it making lists?

This said, I need them. Not in an OCD way, but in a 'this is an externalisation of my failing memory' way.

So, my daughter and I went to the dump with the old baby-stair-gate thing that is now broken and therefore not freecyclable as it is unsafe. I also took the old toaster. Out with the old. She drank her milk in the car and fell asleep as I strained to listen to Radio 4, can't recall the show.

Progressed from the refuse place to the local library and art gallery to view a work by a local artist. I'm doing a project with some local schoolchildren as part of a Masters course. I was doing a reccy of the place and the works prior to our visit there in January 2008. All good. I was impressed to see that the exhibition has paintings by Valette, Lowry and Liam Spencer too.

Nokia memory dump - Why a writer needs a mobile phone.

I was recently diagnosed with CFS and as a result have a few issues (not problems) with memory.
I find myself searching for the correct word, that is sometimes just out of reach, quite regularly.
Similarly, I find myself wandering the supermarket wondering what I've come in for.
So I started to make lists, notes, reminders, aide memoires of all sorts.
First on bits of paper in my wallet - this became cumbersome and made my wallet very thick and uncomfortable to sit on.
Then I started buying small notebooks. Spiral bound at the top and with a piece of elastic attached to the back cover so I can fasten the thing shut. A bit like a police notebook.
From there I started using 3 x 5 index cards after reading about a thing called a Hipster pda, securing them with a big red bulldog clip I got from Staples.This was good. I liked it. But they became many, and they became dog eared and I hated that. Plus they didn't fit in my shirt or jacket pocket as easily or as snugly as my little notebook from Paperchase.
I then graduated to a real PDA. A Palm TX no less! This is good too, better even. It is much more immediate than booting up my laptop, but not quite as easy as using an index card and pen.

As a writer, I have ideas that I want to remember. On a daily basis. I wrote them down. I tapped them in. I've even phoned them home. Speech is the easiest, it simply has to be. So I've set up my Nokia 6070 as another repository of ideas. It is a great little phone. Fifty quid and has a radio and a camera with video capabilities. Not great quality but hey, it was fifty sheets. I use the camera to capture interesting images from all over the place, stuff I want to remember later or write about. If I wanted great pictures, I'd take a proper camera with me.
If I have an idea and I want to speak it, why pay to phone it home when the mobile in my pocket is a dictaphone too? I can record five minutes (I think) of continuous speech/noise/whatever into this gadget and then listen back later at my convenience. I can even beam the audio snippets into my laptop via the IR link.

Soon I won't have to think at all.

All invaluable for the writer I think.
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All the best,

Mark

www.markchambers.org.uk