Nows and Forevers

A few weeks ago, I lamented I wasn’t able to read about 10 files from the ‘90s in Microsoft Word that I had inadvisedly password-protected. I had pretty much lost hope I would be able to open the files.

I thought a lot about what I would have used for a password. I thought I had the right word, but I was having trouble finding the right combination. Every time, it didn’t work. These were some of my early computerized journals, back from when I had switched from a handwritten notebook (we didn’t have Moleskine back then) to the computer. I don’t have a ton of those files, but I had several from the late ‘90s and early 2000s before I settled upon the system I pretty much use now.

I’ve kept up a pretty robust journal since the late ‘80s, and I’ve got entries going back to 1979 and 1985 before 1989, when I started my career and I began to journal in earnest. I’ve lost some of them for sure, but I have everything else. Or at least I think. I might have lost a few along the way.

These files were among the last ones I hadn’t gotten to read. And I wanted to.

Last night, when I was quietly thinking about things, I decided to try the passwords one more time. I thought about what I might have used. Back then, when we didn’t really need a ton of passwords, it was pretty simple. I knew it was something that no one else would understand, something that was linked both to my present and my past.

And I remembered.

I typed it, and was granted access to every file but one, which is apparently corrupted. But it was enough to let me see, and backup unprotected, each of the files stretching back to 1991.
Turns out, most of the files I already had. But some of the entries, which I haven’t seen in 30 years, I did not.

Pulled from the mists of memory.