Samuel Pepys and the SimpleSpace blog …

On this day, January 1, in 1660, Samuel Pepys began his famous diary. He continued his diary for a little under nine and a half years, ending it at age 35 when he believed his eyesight prevented continuing.

During the time Pepys wrote about King Charles II, the Restoration, the plague, the Great Fire of 1666, but mostly, of course, he wrote about himself. He wrote about his insecurities, his relationships, his jealousies.

The diary remained a secret during Pepys’s lifetime, discovered a hundred years later in the volumes of his library. Though it had never been meant for publication, Pepys had bound the pages and placed the diary on the shelves of his own library. It was published in 1835, heavily edited to remove political matters and sexual conquests.

I understand Pepys’s reasons for the diary. Human beings are sorely self-centered, and many very introspective. A diary or journal is a release. It becomes a central part of one’s life, a port in a storm that allows the thoughts to slow and become manageable. It is a confessional, and the writing becomes an act to make one’s life more meaningful and real.

It is no secret that I have secret faces, and multiple boxes to keep the masks and various parts of my life in. But in spite of the sporadic and frequently trivial entries, SimpleSpace is the pages of a secret journal intentionally left open on a desk awaiting discovery.

I have been wrestling with the idea of ending the blog and Annex for some time. I’ll wrestle some more.

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