When I was a kid, my mother often called me her absent-minded professor. Because, while I’m a sponge for information I find fascinating, I’m absolute garbage at wrangling in my head all the concrete details of daily life.  So, since my early teens, I’ve deeply ingrained the habit of writing everything down, and have built up elaborate systems for keeping on top of my notes – whether as daily to-do’s, longer-term projects and goals, or just interesting ideas and theories and resources I want to keep noodling around or might refer back to down the line.  

And, mostly, it all works.  But, at least several times a week, I come across a note I made to myself – whether earlier in the day, or five years back – with far too little detail.  “Angry dinosaur?” one will say.  Or, “moat marketing connections list.”  Or “expand to long-form version.”  And I will think, what in god’s name does that possibly mean?  

On very rare occasion, with additional puzzling, I can sometimes recreate enough of the context around the note, or my thought process leading up to it, to figure out the deeply encoded secret meaning.  But, the vast majority of the time, I just stare at the words for a few minutes, shrug, and move on with life.  While I’m sure I’ve dropped endless balls, forfeited countless opportunities, and generally short-changed my prior insights and current self in the process, c’est la vie.

So, speaking of French idioms, this afternoon, I was updating the back-end of this (creaky, and clearly in need of a redesign) site, and came across a several-years-old draft blog post – this one, in fact – with no content except the title. Après nous, le déluge.

And, seriously, what?