Nows and Forevers

I came across some digital files that I had made in the ’90s, journals I had written between 1990 and about 1999. Even more than now, I kept a combination of Word and WordStar files, handwritten notebooks and even typed pages as I journaled.
At first I was excited. I knew there were a few entries that I didn’t have elsewhere, particularly from the early 1990s. Then I was depressed. I couldn’t get into them. I somehow (and for some reason) encrypted them in Word.
These were the dark ages of the Internet, when you had maybe one password and that was it. I don’t know when Word began offering passwords as an option, but at that point I was squeamish about prying eyes. I hid my printer journal and thought passwords offered the answer in Word.
And I even thought I remembered, even though encrypted them in 1999. That’s quite a feat. I often can’t tell you what I had for lunch.
But the first password try failed. So did the second. And the third. And every other permutation. So the king lost decade of journals will remain locked behind a password I don’t remember and probably won’t
Which is a shame. I have one more chance – another set of permutations of the password I can try.

Let’s hope.