The Journey Forward Begins with the Journey to Now

I'm taking a dive into my personal archive, reacquainting myself with who I've been and my journey to who I am today. The specific nudge came from Shawn Rowe and the Guided Project class he's teaching at Lillstreet.

Larry Wolf, Creating an Archive (2020)

I began by organizing the photographic slides I've created. They have been in boxes of various sorts as well as non-archival vinyl sheets. Any semblance of order has been scrambled over the years when I would make slide shows for my friends, then dump the tray of slides into random boxes and start again. I'm about halfway through sorting all of that into archival boxes.

  

Exploring and Honoring

Julia Cameron,
It's Never Too Late
to Begin Again

I'm using Julia Cameron's book It's Never Too Late to Begin Again as a framework. She has a twelve-week plan that includes reflecting on life, using one week for every one-twelfth of a life, for me, that's groups of five to six years. The goal is to create a memoir for that time period.


  

Beginning a bit before the beginning, here is a photo of my parents on their honeymoon.

Rough age groups. There are only eleven of these. As I work through the years, I may shift them around a bit.

Age Year              Landmark / Place
00-05 1950-1956 Birth & Infancy / NY and VA
06-11 1957-1962 Grades 1-7  PS95, JHS 143 / NY
12-17 1963-1968 Grades 8-12  New Rochelle Academy / NY
18-23 1969-1974 College and Grad School / FL & MA
24-30 1975-1981 Resource One and PROMIS Lab / San Francisco and Burlington VT
31-37 1982-1988 ComputerVision, PROMIS Health Tech & Second Foundation / Boston MA and Westford VT
38-42 1989-1993 Second Foundation & Karme Choling / Cabot VT
43-49 1994-2000 Ventech-Vencor / Louisville KY
50-55 2001-2006 Kindred Healthcare / Ann Arbor MI and Chicago IL
56-62 2007-2013 Kindred & Federal Advisory Committees / Chicago IL & Washington DC
63-68 2014-2020 Strategic Health Network & MatrixCare / Chicago IL