The digital calendar is often presented chiefly for its forward looking functionality which is to organize and follow up with things to come. A coming event is put on a chosen daily or hourly calendar slot. Reminders would fire up a few minutes prior so that we could not miss important happenings out of absent mindedness. Shiny calendars like Google’s act as personal assistant of some sort, which manage to fit regular workout sessions into a busy schedule.

Unfortunately, for me the calendar has not worked very well to that end. Other than helping me avoid meeting overlap, the laid out schedule on calendar had little control over my day. For the most part, 8 hour per day is working hours, which is pointless to put on calendar. But finer breakdown during those hours did not prove productive as it often involved long streak of quite of working and thinking with occassional breaks. For the remaing hours, the effort of filling in blank calendar slots in advance and then following them strictly seem daunting, which I gave up after a few tries.

But there is one side effect that was surprisingly useful. For days that I dutifully put my schedule on calendar, the days appear less blurry and unremarkable from a retrospective view. It is like a sense of accomplishment for a writer to overcome the initial blank page and manage to scribe down a rough opening. The past days seem more real, even when it floats out of existence, some remnant remains.

Thus this new year, I would take on record my doings on my calendar in the aftermath of them happening. To make things more solid looking in retrospect. So that I would not be a sitting duck wondering when did the day go by.