I’m scanning all my journals and free-pages of scribbles and writing. It’s a fairly big project. I already have about 260mb full. Probably between 300 and 500 pages scanned so far. I have at least 2 or 3 times this left to go, and that’s just original hand-written copies of things. there are at least 4 journals and a few notebooks that I haven’t done yet either. This is part of a much larger project to get all that stuff into a digital form so I can access it and index it as appropriate. And so I have it when I want it.

Once it’s all scanned in, I’m going to be transcribing much of it. I’d use OCR software, but I can often not read my own handwriting well. I don’t think any OCR is even close to up to the task yet. Someday, but not today. As I go through all of this, I’m finding things that I’ve written in the past that I might share from time to time. I found this in a stack of papers. I wrote it a year ago today:

Advice to the Oppressed

Fight back, on your own terms, with idealism and principle[s].

I dream of a world where the sovereignty of the individual is respected and sacrosanct. I dream of a time when the very thought that I might not be offered a job because I’m gay is absurd to everyone.

My dream will not come without a fight. Not mine, or yours. We have to struggle to bring about change. We will fight many battles on many fields and streets. But no matter how weary we become, we can not become the oppressors. Of our children, or any other people.

Our righteousness lies in the single truth of idealism, of a world without institutionalised or cultural oppression. Any act that is not in perfect concordance with that ideal — any behavior that is against that principle weakens us. This is why equality is inevitable. Those who would oppress do so while spouting a message of equity and fairness. their incongruence will always be their undoing. Do not make the same errors.

Fear the oppressor who is honest and principled in his oppression. He is a zealot, even as I am. The honest believer is the most convincing and dangerous person there is. If he is intelligent and charismatic (and he will be) so much the worse.

Here are the scans if you’re interested in my terrible penmanship: