Recently I have been reviewing my life and trying to identify various themes, important events, influential people or mentors and life-defining choices. My family are very keen for me to write about my life and sometimes I’m not sure just how to get started.

I don’t want to bore my future descendents with a history filled with trivial details: I want them to learn from my mistakes and to recognise similar characteristics within themselves.

Several friends suggested I use a Timeline to help me sort my life experiences into manageable portions and I searched for something suitable via the internet. However, I found it simplest to use a notebook and pencil.

This is what I did:

• Starting on the first page of my notebook, I wrote the year that I was born. On the second page, I wrote the year that I was one, and so on throughout the book right up to my current age (I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth!).
• Every day or two, I’d flip through the notebook and select a couple of years on which to focus my memory. I carried the notebook with me as I focussed my thoughts on 1957, asking myself those who, what, where, why type questions about my life, family and circle of friends during that year. Where were we living? What type of car did we have? Who was my best friend? Once I had the answer to my questions, I quickly wrote down those points on the appropriate page in my notebook.
• When I caught up with family or friends, I’d take out my notebook and ask them questions about some of the blank areas or years. Is 1961 a bit hazy because I went to stay with my grandparents as Mum was in a car accident? Which year did we go to Disneyland for a family holiday?
• Once I felt I had exhausted my memory bank, I tore out all of the pages and placed them chronologically on the dining table. Firstly I went through them looking for milestone events which had occurred and I made a list of those dates and details.
• Continuing, I looked for the mentors in my life, lifetime themes, choices I’d made (both good and bad) and again noted the years and details, which provided me with a) a good idea of where to start writing my life story and b) the areas where I needed to do more background research.

Like many people, I don’t want to start my story, like Dickens did in David Copperfield, “I was born with a caul around my head…..,” however the Timeline has given me several good openings, some sound ideas for different chapters and even a thought or two about how to end my story, given that I live long enough to tell my life story in my own words.

Have you thought of starting a Timeline as a way of sorting through your life time of memories?

How do you identify which incidents you want to write about and those you should omit? Let me know how you tackle this subject as I’m sure many of us just don’t know how to ‘get started.’

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Aunt Ruby Remembers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.