/ˈmemˌwär/ noun. a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation. Usually memoirs. an account of one's personal life and experiences; autobiography. the published record of the proceedings of a group or organization, as of a learned society.
About a year ago I purchased my Mom a subscription to a service called Storyworth. Once you subscribe this company will send you one question per week and at the end of a year they’ll compile all of your answers into a beautifully bound book that can be passed down through the generations of your family.
Being the administrator for my Mom’s Storyworth account I’ve been able to pick upcoming questions and see her answers after she writes them. As I’ve been doing this over the past year I’ve realized how incredibly valuable writing a memoir is. Not only does it allow you to share your stories and relive past memories but it also teaches you a lot about yourself in the process, things that may have otherwise forever resided in your blindspots.
A few weeks ago I bought myself a Storyworth subscription and over the course of the next year I’ll be writing my own memoir, mainly as a tool for self-growth. I decided just a few days after starting to work on this that I’d share my experiences along the way with my readers on Hive.
Next comes the fun part...
Memoir Monday. I’m going to be posting a question every Monday for the next year prompting anyone who wants to join in to write their own blockchain-based memoir for future generations to read!
All you have to do is take the memoir prompt question I post on Monday and answer it in your own Hive post. Be sure to tag your post with #memoirmonday. In a year from now you’ll have a legitimate memoir that you can pass along to future generations of your family. But what I really hope is it provides a valuable glimpse into your inner self. We’ll all get to learn more about each other and, hopefully, ourselves each week.
I hope you’ll join me in this initiative. The questions will all be very simple so if you’re participating feel free to write as much or as little as you’d like. Also, remember you have the entire week to answer the Memoir Monday prompt. New prompt questions will drop each Monday for the next twelve months.
Here’s the very first Memoir Monday question:
Here’s my answer:
What store did you love to go to as a child?
I used to love going to the Yankee Trader store in downtown Columbus when I was a small child. I grew up seeing all of the ads for pranks like — whoopie cushions, joy buzzers, and squirting lapel flowers in the back of comic books and Yankee Trader sold all of this stuff. Yankee Trader was full of oddities and fun things, I don’t think there are many stores left like it.
My childhood friend Kevin Gales and I would ride the COTA bus downtown on school holidays or during summer vacation in the morning and would spend the day riding the bus up Broad Street and then transfer to the High Street route. We would stop in Lazarus department store, always ate lunch at McDonald’s, and were thrilled to ride the glass elevator that ran on the outside of the Nationwide building near the Ohio Center. None of these trips were complete without a trip to Yankee Trader. This was back in the early 1980’s, when the Short North was still “gritty”. The neighborhood has a completely different vibe today.
It's as simple as that!
At the end of this next twelve months we'll have created something immensely valuable together. It's so important to know our "whys" in life and there's no better way to do that than this.
Someday all that will be left of our existence are memories of us, our deeds, and words. It's up to you to leave as rich of a heritage as possible for future generations to learn from. So, go ahead, tell your stories! I can't wait to read them.
Enjoy the day. Thank you for reading!
~Eric Vance Walton~
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com)
