Welcome to Luke’s Weekly Dispatch

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Well, here we go again- I’m starting a journal. The last time I did this, unsuccessfully, was back in high school, and I kept it for maybe a year or two daily. This time, I’m hoping to run it as an online public captain’s log- post a long update every week as to what’s been going on in my life, reflections on interesting happenings, and generally a resource- for those who love me, for those who hate me, and even in time for myself to look back upon and reflect.

A couple of points.

First, why make it public? The main reason is that I see no reason to hide my life from people, and logistically it makes sense to publish on an open blog rather than just save a big word document. Posting publicly requires a certain amount of discretion, of course- keeping conversations private, editing out things that would hurt other people if they were made public, etc.- but generally I think it should be possible to keep an experience-and-reflection journal and share it with others.

Second, why keep it at all? Quite simply, I want to be able to look back and read my mind, reminisce on things that happened, and connect dots together. If anyone ever writes a biography of me they’ll have plenty of resources- my emails, my Facebook, my published writings, my blog, people who knew me- but that’ll always be someone else’s interpretation of the story. Keeping a journal, a sort of “running memoirs,” allows me some personal discretion over how that story is told and cast. You might call me arrogant, paranoid, overconfident, or anything else, and you’d probably be right. Nonetheless, I’m still keeping it.

A couple of notes on the content.

I’ll include, generally, a summation of the week’s events, assisted by reviews on my Facebook wall and my personal calendar. I’ll include reflections and tidbits on those events. More broadly I’ll include commentary on current events bigger than my own life, at the level of California politics, American politics, and world politics. As I am working in California politics, these will have some influence over my own work. I will reflect on what I’ve read each week, if anything stuck out to me. I’ll share links to what I’ve written each week. And I’ll generally muse about various things, plans, and tell my pre-January 2017 story in bits and pieces over time. And over time, I’ll probably paint for myself and my readers and posterity a portrait of my own character more revealing than anything I’d write about myself while consciously thinking about my character.

I also need practice writing, both in terms of writing on a routine and disciplined basis, and in terms of playing around with the English language to perfect my voice, to make it just literary enough that I’m interesting to read. No better way to do that than to write, write, write.

This will be my official “running memoirs” to the world, and as such it will be somewhat political in terms of what is included and excluded, and how things are cast. It is intended as a window into my mind, and a resource for myself and anyone interested. As I’m concluding my college career and jumping into my first real job, I figure now’s as good a time as any to start writing.

I don’t know that anyone will want to read this, and that’s fine. If I can pore over these writings at the sunset of my life and I can lean back and know something about myself I hadn’t previously known, that would be enough, and would have made the whole enterprise worth it.

So here’s off to this new project. We’ll see where it goes. Expect a dispatch every Sunday evening, or thereabouts.