The Innate Recordkeeping Urge
Why do some of us feel compelled to document certain activities in our lives?
Earlier this week I wrote about “Lexi,” the woman who lived in New Lexington, Ohio, about 100 years ago and kept a journal in which she obsessively logged every piece of mail she sent or received over a 10-year period.
It’s not clear why Lexi felt the need to maintain a record of her postal activities, but her story struck a chord with Inconspicuous Consumption reader Bob Andrews, who posted the following comment on that article:
[T]hanks to Lexi, I don’t feel so bad about keeping car gas fill-up journals for the last 40+ years — journals that I’ve never once had the need to refer to but have kept anyway.
I was intrigued, so I emailed Bob and asked if he could send a few photos. That’s him in the photo shown above, holding his current gas journal. Here are some representative pages:
As you can see, each entry consists of four data points: the date, the odometer reading at the time of the fill-up, the total price, and the number of gallons purchased. It’s a collection of sorts!
I had questions, so I asked Bob for an interview. Here’s a transcript of our discussion, edited for length and clarity:
Inconspicuous Consumption: Do you recall when you started doing this?
Bob Andrews: I do. The first vehicle I bought that was mine — not something handed down from my dad or something like that — was an ’81 Corolla in ’81. So I started then.
IC: Whoa — that’s 45 years ago!