Celebrating 20 years of... something

14 July 1989 was a watershed day in my life.

When I consider trying to describe what it was that had such a huge influence on me on that day, it is hard to see it, in retrospect, as much more than the drama of making and losing new friends, confused teenage emotions, and the desire to reach outside of my small world and be part of something bigger than myself.

I had just finished a week of summer camp as a junior counsellor: not quite a camper, not quite an adult leadership figure. During that week, I had developed a benign crush on another junior counsellor, one that was a little bit outside of my reach. She lived in Paris, France.

I had already gotten the bug to learn a foreign language, and French was my language of choice (for whatever reason a 14-year-old boy in the U.S., completely surrounded by English, might make that choice). I hadn't gotten far in teaching it to myself because the only language offered in school was Spanish, so after a couple of weeks of confusion I had to drop the French and go with the one that was being graded. But I'd learned a little from cassettes.

And now, here was a real-life ambassador of that language, and she was my friend. And she was amazingly cute, besides.

I knew that nothing like a serious relationship would become of it, but I was suddenly in turmoil on the day we had to part ways, with nothing but a snail-mail address to hint at future communication (e-mail was a few years away).

14 July 1989 was the day that happened. Funny coincidence.

I made a couple of big decisions on that day. One was that I was going to learn French for real, beginning as soon as possible.

The other was a stab at dealing with my "problems" that evening, back at home from the exhausting week at camp and emotion overload. I began keeping a hand-written journal. And I've kept that hand-written journal, off an on, to this day.

The journal has been threatened by technology, codependent relationships, attempts at blogging, and more, but I've always picked it back up and continued. Now there are something like 30 volumes (I'll verify that number later), some of them packed in storage in the U.S., and some in my home here in Israel. The most recent one is in the messenger bag I carry with me every day, ready for the next entry.

If you think I'm crazy, see this bit of biographical information on author Herman Wouk.

Why do I say it was a "funny coincidence"? Because for those who don't recognise it yet, that happened to be the French bicentennial: le quatorze juillet, 200th anniversary.

Now I ask you: what is a naïve ("naïf" would be more correct, but...) 17-year-old boy supposed to make of that information? On the day that my world had just gotten bigger, there was this coincidence, somehow reinforcing its importance. And not just in my imagination — I actually pursued my desires on that day, and that pursuit really did change my life.

And today I begin this blog, whose major purpose is to let me write all the content that doesn't neatly fit into my other blog, The Mishnayic Hacker. Not to replace the handwritten journals; I plan to write about their humongous usefulness at some point, but this blog serves another purpose, twenty years to the date.

Almost makes you believe in the Gregorian calendar.