Secondhand Sleuth

I’ve become a little obsessed with logging my activities. My FitBit is already logging my sleep, heart rate, and steps I have taken, and I add in my walks, PT and free weights workouts, weight and blood pressure over time.

I’ve already blogged about my Goodreads account, where I sometimes add ratings and reviews but mostly just keep track of dates and titles I read so I can go back and look at the transcript.

In some instances I am starting to reconstruct information, such as flagging concerts I have attended on Setlist. I have a plan to go through my old ticket stubs and, for more recent years, email confirmations. I’ve also started adding albums I own to Discogs and video games I’ve played to Backloggd, sites that Simon introduced me to.

I create a garden layout every year, and document my perennial purchases and where I planted them. I use an app to ID plants I see on my walks or garden visits, which also allows me to save photos of my various plants and log when I water and fertilize them.

Some logs are exercises in data cleanup. What are all of our family’s financial transactions? I carefully categorize and tag income and expenses. Who are my ancestors? I accept and decline Ancestry record hints, member photos that I think add to the person’s profile and those that are junk family crests and scans of documents missing all the metadata.

And then there’s my blog and my journal. What are the events of my life? What are my thoughts? What are my hobbies? What are my collections of links? When I take a class or read an article, I add in the questions and my responses, my goals for self-improvement.

I look back at my past social media posts. What play was I excited to see 17 years ago? What photo did I share for Father’s Day 2020? I look at my Flickr albums. Is there one more photo I can add to my album of my Mom? Did I capture every trip to Colorado?

Logging serves me well at work. I create a notes page for every meeting. I maintain dozens of spreadsheets. I carefully label and sort Jira tickets. I add job responsibilities and certifications to my LinkedIn profile. My email is sorted into folders.

When is logging too much? Am I failing to really enjoy an activity because I am thinking about my plan to log it? I don’t think so, but I notice how much pleasure I take in the logging and reviewing my past. This is the modern version of the scrapbooks of my school days, which I still peruse. It’s why I keep all the books I have read arranged on the shelves rather than passing them on.

But that gets into collections, which is a whole other obsession.