On Monday, January 18, 1993, I started to write in a black 200 page college ruled notebook to count down to our wedding day. I was living in the house I grew up in and I was so anxious to marry Karen. I decided to write that volume because I knew my life was in a phase that would never be repeated in my future and I wanted to capture what I was feeling. I decided that I wasn't going to expect any words to be added to my 200
Days notebook on our actual wedding day so I decided that I would use
August 6, 1993, as the final day on which I would write, a decision I
have carried forward with each 200 Days volume. I also decided that I would create a list of 200 topics and assign a topic to each page. I would write a single front of a page about the topic. Many of the pages in the first volume have a couple of sentences to indicate that the topic was irrelevant or that the topic didn't merit writing any words. I wrote about Karen (of course), my friends, my family, my job, and relevant news of the day.
It so happened that the first night I began writing about the countdown to beginning a new chapter in my life was also the day that Chris Street, a basketball player at the U of Iowa, was killed in a car crash. It was also in January 1993 when Metallica came to Carver-Hawkeye Arena and played a concert, which I attended.
On Tuesday, January 18, 1994, I started to write in a red 200 page college ruled notebook to count down to our first wedding anniversary. I was living in the apartment in Coralville that Karen had been living in prior to marrying me and I wanted to capture the magic of writing the first 200 Days volume again.
On Wednesday, January 18, 1995, I started to write in a blue 200 page college ruled notebook to count down to our second wedding anniversary. A lot of changes were happening in life, such as we had purchased a house in North Liberty and no longer were living in the apartment in Coralville. Once again, I wanted to capture the magic of the previous two volumes. However, I realized during the writing of that volume, I was not actually recapturing anything from the previous two volumes. It was a burden to maintain a schedule that allowed me to write a 200 Days volume, a personal journal, and what would turn out to be my final spiral notebook of lyrics and poems.
Which is why it wasn't until Friday, January 18, 2013, before I attempted to write a 200 Days volume to document the countdown to our 20th wedding anniversary. So many changes in my life had happened in the 6375 days (17 years, 5 months, 1 week, 5 days) since I finished the third volume on Sunday, August 6, 1995, that I felt like the time was right to attempt another 200 Days volume.
When Thursday, January 18, 2018, arrived, I felt like writing another 200 Days volume to document the countdown to our 25th wedding anniversary made sense. Once again, there had been so many changes during the 1626 days (4 years, 5 months, 1 week, 5 days) between Tuesday, August 6, 2013 and Thursday, January 18, 2018.
All of that leads me to Wednesday, January 18, 2023, and the first day of yet another 200 Days volume. In a short 200 days (6 months, 2 weeks, 5 days), it will be Sunday, August 6, 2023, which is the night before being married to Karen for 30 years. I am going to temporarily not follow the guidelines of my 10 Year Project, which is how I have been writing my journals since January 1, 2012. I assign a month and year to each of the 5 sections in a 200 page notebook. For example, I could have a month of writing from 5 different years in the same 200 page notebook, meaning my journal writing is not done sequentially, which is what I did from May 1989 through December 31, 2011. My intention is to write this 200 Days volume as a part of the 10 Year Project, except I started a 200 page notebook today and I am going to write sequentially in as many 200 page notebooks as I need until August 6, 2023.
I am uncertain how often I will mention this 200 Days volume on this blog. However, since it is the first day of this volume, I felt it was relevant to write about what is happening outside of writing this blog.
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