A Brief History of “IO,OOO Whens” by Anne Laker
A sample of Anne’s diary entries
I know what I was doing on the last 38 August 18ths of my life. And almost any other day of the last 38 years. I’m a die-hard diarist.
Or obsessive-compulsive. Or easily self-amused. Take your pick. The flip side of addiction is discipline.
Diarying makes me happy. Even if my diaries are by turns boring, mean, pathetic, or repetitive (cantaloupe is mentioned every August).
This year marks Year 39 of my tiny diary documentary habit, manifested in these small booklets, in my microscopic printing. All piled up, the days of my life fit into a box the size of a loaf of banana bread.
It all started in 1985. The Hallmark store at the mall was giving out free date books. Fifteen-year-old me snagged one and marked the date of an upcoming party in pink ink. Once the party was over, I reported on its outcome, in red:
In these diaries, not shockingly, I tend to include: what I ate, the weather, where I went, who I saw, how I felt, what I wore, and how the Chicago Bears played. You could rightly ask: so what? What’s with the epic navel-gazing?
I sustain the habit because:
I am against forgetting. This is also why I write poetry. Though my diary is easier to write than poetry. If I’m lucky, I merge the two.
Remembering my life is a way of caring for myself in a way that no one else—not even the people who love me most—can. You are the only witness to your interior life.
It is a curatorial act of control. I pick the color pen, I pick the words. No one cares, so I am free.
…it’s a habit. I won’t stop until my hands are unsteady or my eyes go bad.
Having a private outlet for myself creates a bigger capacity to receive and listen to the experiences of my friends, my family, and strangers.
Diary entries from 1986 to 2014 (left to right)
In 2015, I applied for a Creative Renewal Arts Fellowship from the Indy Arts Council to create an exhibition, website, and social media feed from the accumulated diaries. Those 30 years equaled out to about 10,000 diary entries, so I named the project 10000 Whens. My ingenious artist friend Andy Fry figured out a way to methodically batch-scan all 10,000 days as individual .jpgs. My ingenious artist friend Niina Cochran designed a conceptual, floaty website where the diary entries emerge and diverge as in a vintage video game and you click on a date book to read its contents.
Do I have anything to hide? Of course, but I’m betting on the fact that no one will have the time, interest, or patience to read too many of the entries. I love to hide in plain view.
Andy helped me design the interactive exhibition staged in September 2016. Kindly friends came to hear recordings of random diary entries; record, write, and share their own entries; view entries through a Viewmaster; purge their memories in a confessional room; and enter a re-creation of my bedroom where the writing happens. Dan Grossman did a thoughtful write-up of the show in NUVO.
Since then, when the mood strikes, I still post a .jpg of diary entries on Instagram, on the corresponding date from a random year. My diaries beyond 2015 are not scanned in. But technically I’m up to about 12,707 “whens” now.
What will become of my diaries once I’ve written my last entry? I don’t have children, and if I did, it might be complicated. Maybe my niece will give them to an archive, or an artist, inspired to morph them into something other. I don’t care much. I’m doing it for life, writing my own life in withering, loving, hapless detail, as long as it lasts, cantaloupe, football, and all.
