When I’m in the old age asylum (i.e., a senior living home/ memory care facility), I assume I’ll want to remember the lovely life I led. Dementia will surely distort my memories (OMG my memories are already dodgy at 48), so I’ll want something I can hold in my sun-spotted hands—a tangible repository of my memories, pages to flip to, archives that provide proof that I Did Things, that I Lived A Good Life, I Swear.

“Look!”, I’ll recount to the indifferent volunteer just trying to rack up her community service hours, “on July 9^th, 2009, The Husband and I went to a fancy cocktail bar in Chicago and then ate at that famous hot dog joint”—to which she will respond, “uh huh” while scrolling through her phone (or whatever device will exist in 2054) while wheeling me to the 4:45 dinner seating. (I do love an early evening meal.)

Some might call this book of memories I’m referring to as “a diary.”  I’m not a diary kind of person (surely I’m not the only one who’s self-conscious about writing “Dear Diary” like I’m 10 years old, griping about unrequited love onto tear-stained pages, because “WHY DIDN’T PAT ASK ME TO BIKE TO MAC’S MILK WITH HIM AFTER SCHOOL?!?!”), but I am a calendar kind of person. I love recording shit I did on a calendar!

I used to buy old-school 7 x 4-inch calendar books and write out the Things We Did on any given day (like “5-mile walk by the lake, drinks at the Aberdeen Tap, made homemade pesto for dinner”), which was lovely, although I got tired of it after a decade or so. I might have given it up because I felt like I had to compete against the person I used to be, who was doing more things than the current me is up for? I’m older now and I can’t drink that much! And who wants to walk for 5 miles when 2 or 1 will do? And making pesto means pulling out the food processor and then having to clean the food processor, so that’s a hard no these days. I’ll save the rest of this issue-processing for therapy, but for now, I’m just saying that you might use the calendar approach to record your moments, or the diary approach, or you might do what I do now…

Yes, this is a cat show. Stop your judging (of me, not the cats).

How do I record life highlights now? I make custom notebooks (they are great because you can put whatever picture you want on the cover of the coil-bound book—usually a pet cat—and also the year and whatever words you feel will capture the essence of that time in life, like “PARTY HARDY 2016!!” or “Trying Not to Die of The Plague, 2020 Edition”). I scotch-tape the receipts of the meals we’ve had out, tickets of events (like to the cat show we recently went to in Palm Springs (OH YES WE DID THAT), the pretty collars around the cigars The Husband smokes on a weekend, the business cards of places we buy cute things from… you get it. Evidence of a life that was lived and loved.

Yes, there are 400 restaurants in this bazonkers collage. That’s a lot of appetizers.

Oh! If you, too, are obsessed with food and eating out (former eating disordered folks, nod with me), you might appreciate the thing I did in 2013… I went back in my meticulous archives and made a collage of the logos of the Places We Ate At—high end, medium end, low end. It’s a treasure trove of fabulous meal memories that never fails to amuse… we’ll look at it and reminisce about “that time we ate at Au Cheval”, and “are they still open?!”. In a poignant metaphor for the fleeting lives we live, many of the restaurants captured in this 2007 – 2012 collage have closed. We, like the restaurants we’ve had a great time at, are temporary. We have our day in the sun and then that sun sets (or we file for bankruptcy).

The good thing about a highlight notebook/ journal/ diary/ calendar is that it conveniently excludes the un-excellent parts of life. I never record things like, “Didn’t get booked for that big speaking gig I really wanted,” or “What am I doing with my life,” or “Dad fell again,” or “Totally bloated today” in the notebook. This means that when I’m old(er) and gray(er) and (even more) profoundly memory-challenged, I’ll get to look back on the glowiest parts of life: the time we saw The Tragically Hip in Chicago (RIP Gordon Downie), the time we pretended to know how to do tai-chi in the park, the time Terri and I cocktailed at The Aviary, the time I barfed after our first day in Napa (because we all barf after our first time wine tasting, right? That’s totally a thing?). (I will skip attaching this rather uncouth photo.)

The science of savoring makes it clear that we can wring the joy out of moments over three landscapes of time: ahead of time (pre-savoring—like when we plan excursions for an upcoming trip), in the moment (just plain old savoring-savoring—like when we’re tuned into the rustling of the trees in the wind), and after the moment (post-savoring—like every single word we’re talking about here in this post together). Keeping a veritable scrapbook of a Live Well-Lived is a post-savoring intervention that provides well-being fodder on those evenings when we want to remember what we ordered at that steakhouse in Vegas back in 2013. “Did we do the wedge salad that night?” is a question that will never go unanswered in our house. (And the answer should always be yes to ordering a wedge salad.)

My sister Terri does this even better than I do; she takes the time to record itineraries from vacations so she can look back after the fact and fondly remember the cold plunges and gigglingly remember the man snoring beside her in the sound therapy class. I’ve been known to write a list of Memorable Moments from vacations or trips, like lines uttered by hotel staff (e.g., “good luck with the room” 👈 WTF?!), silly gaffes, great cocktail recipes, funny-after-the-fact disasters of all sizes… you know: the minutia that life is made up of. Things that would be a shame to forget.

Might you want to capture the moments in your life in this way? And if you are already recording your highlights, are you going back every so often to squeeze the savoring juice out of your memory reservoirs?

I’m enthusiastically enthralled with living like we mean it. I want to commemorate—or maybe just capture a smidgeon of—the moments that mattered in this 4,000-ish week life I get to be here for. I don’t advocate taking pictures of Every Single Thing; I take a quick picture to cement the memory-in-the-making and then get to work taping some kind of artifact of the good time we had into the archives when I get home that night or when I’m of sound mind the next morning. One day I’ll look back and say, “I had one hell of a ride, didn’t I?”. And then the exceedingly bored volunteer will blow a bubble with her gum and nod, and after she leaves for her shift I’ll tape her gum wrapper into my notebook.