Motivated writing

Since I have decided to do my "20 years ago today" blog starting in early March, I have been researching like mad through my diaries and notebooks from the time and writing the blogs to be posted on the appropriate days next month. Then I search for images on Google maps that will substitute for the photos from the time that I seem to have lost. It has been very exciting and exhausting too.

It is amazing how much I remember and how much I don't. I am able to expand some areas of my daily journal I wrote back then, while other seemingly important events I hardly remember at all. But the more I get into the memories of my big trip, the more the emotions flood back. Not all of them were positive. All my other cycling trips came off trouble free for the most part, for the three to nine weeks they lasted, but not this one. From the first day there were troubles and challenging moments, worse than in any other trip.

I have also adjusted to dealing with my present disability by not dwelling on the past, by living in the present, and I am now constantly being reminded of what I can no longer do, how much I have lost. I need to crawl inside the events to write about them well, but each time I am at risk of slipping into depression about my present state. I am handling it well, keeping involved and detached so far, but I tend to sink deeper the farther along I go.

As it absorbs me, I am left with little energy for anything else. Other times when I have been fixated on my writing, I cannot talk about anything else, and I have learned that most of my friends have little interest in what I write and they probably don't want to hear me talking about it all the time. In my mind my life becomes restricted, unvaried and I become very boring. I am always afraid the writing takes too much out of me and leaves me like a shell. On the other hand, my mind quickens and life has more spark. I am never lonely when I am writing, even though I rarely socialize with my friends.

I am into the third week of the trip now. I am still in my first country, Portugal. I am not sure if I can keep it up for a whole year but having a head start on the postings will help. I am doing them as a MS Word document and will cut and paste them as the days roll along. As the days slowly brighten and the spring nears, so nears the start of the blog. My excitement is growing.