I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve been a committed journal keeper for some time now (daily, since July 2012). I didn’t note there a paired set of related experiences, both on this trip…
With a few days of loosely organized time available to me upon arrival in Singapore, I decided to catch up on some missed entries for the prior week or two. (Usually, I record my thoughts on the day they occur; on occasion, if I’ve missed a day or two, I’ll reach back and fill in those gaps — using my email and calendar to help my memory pull up events and thoughts from those recent days.)
I use Day One as my journal software. Simple, clean, elegant, and with excellent cloud-based sync facilities across devices (Mac, iOS) — it’s a great app.
When I opened it in Singapore, and clicked over to its calendar view, I found that not only were the expected recent gaps present… but a large number of days from earlier periods. Panic. Syncing glitch? Drop Box problem? Operator error?
After a hour or so confirming that the gaps were in fact there (not just on my MacBook Air, but on my iPad and iPhone as well)… and settling on a rational hypothesis as to root cause (my erasure of a number of “duplicate” entries reported in a Drop Box warning message a few months ago), I committed myself to the task of, using email, calendar, and fuzzy memory, filling in all of those missing entries — over the past three years.
Several hours later, on a Sunday morning — mission accomplished. No more gaps. (Yes, a few of the back-filled entries were little more than fillers — but no more gaps.)
Fast forward a few days. Now in Thailand. Opened Day One. Gaps. GAPS!!!
Somehow, just then, rational thought pushed its way past my rapidly gathering panic though… with just enough strength for an “Aha” moment…
I was in Thailand, half a world, and as many ticks of the clock, away from California. Day One uses system time on its host to assign posts to days in its database, and its Calendar. When I changed system time on my devices to reflect my locale, all entries that would have been recorded in an adjacent day if, at the time I wrote them I was then in Thailand — were now showing as if I had. A whole bunch of “Thursday” entries, made within 12 hours of midnight, became “Friday” entries.
If there were no other Thursday entries — gap. Switch system time back to home time — no gap.
As Einstein once said, “It’s all relative.”