anecdote – a short, entertaining story about a real incident or person
antidote – something that counteracts an unpleasant feeling or situation
“There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.”
– Petrarch
In December of 2006 I began writing a series of arbitrary thoughts, feelings, and emotions, some of which were taken from my diary. At first I referred to them as a “Compilation of Thoughts,” and then it occurred to me that the act of recording said thoughts is helpful to preventing the overcrowding of one’s mind. As I explained:
“The reason I have pulled this diary (if such a blatantly orthodox term dare be used) from its cobwebby corner in my bookshelf is because I see it as a potential thought-storer…This thought-storing, I firmly believe, can be helpful, perhaps even healing, to my mind; like a mental wound-dressing. Just as numerous antidotes can cure physical wounds, there are ways of taming the infirmities of the mind, and writing, I firmly believe, is one of them.”
Of course, like most projects I usually begin to undertake with a sense of unsurpassed vigor and passion, I failed to keep up with this “thought-storer” and it sat in my hard drive collecting cyberdust. However, the whole hip act of weblogging got me going again–and now here I am reviving the revival, I guess another attention-deficit-related impulse, but hopefully this time I’ll continue to diligently update it, for my interest and (ideally) for others’.
So, read and enjoy, and check back in when you can, now that this public journal is posted on the Internet for all to see. Who knows if anything will come of it. If you’ve read this far, you must be interested in the origin of the whole Anecdote Antidotes thing, so here it is: “Taking what I said earlier about writing being the basis for a kind of mental healing, I don’t think it would be amiss to call any collection of thoughts compiled for that purpose an antidote of anecdotes. Which, as a matter of fact, I believe I will call this “Compilation of Thoughts”: Anecdote Antidotes. And now I think I have exhausted this prelude, as it were.”
That’s all for now, folks. Talk to you soon.
-P