I burned fifteen years worth of Day-Timers today, the culmination of a months long project. I went through each day from 1984 to 1999, creating a corresponding entry in my Google Calendar. By ’99 I had started keeping notes in Act! (now on a rusting hard drive in some landfill).

I considered shredding these but the wire binder made that impractical. So I put them in a wash tub, soaked them in gasoline and burned them.

In addition to being a long, tedious (and pointless?) task, I found it a bit stressful. The pages were filled with more unpleasant memories than I would have imagined. Don’t get me wrong. I worked for a great company, with some really wonderful people. But, in retrospect, I wasn’t having as much fun as I always though I had. Does that many any sense at all?

Flipping through those old pages brought back some physical sensations. A little stomach clinch over some bad news… tightness in the neck muscles as some unpleasantness unfolded. I was glad to get through the final month. And the burning ritual seemed therapeutic.