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    By Rich in Posts

    From notes I made last month…

    I wake up, another nice sunny day in Southern California and has become my habit, roll out of bed, toss on a t-shirt and go to my home office, hitting the shift key to wake my Mac up. The first thing I do is lookin the upper right hand corner of the screen and check the date.

    May 14.

    Oh, right. Today’s the day. I briefly consider leaving a note, but realize when I came here from almost two weeks ago, there was no note. So, my inner weenie again coming out, I elect not to tempt fate and the universe by doing something that might well result in paradox. Maybe someday, but not today.

    I reflect on how interesting it is, that when I was in 1976 (and 1977, ’78…well, that story’s not finished yet, so I won’t spoil it) I had no sense of not wanting to mess with the past. It’s entirely possible that my time back there, and the resulting timeline created by my actions that were far different than my first time through the period, instilled in me enough caution that I didn’t want to ever go messing with branching timelines again. Whatever the case, at this stage in my jouney through life, I’m not interested in screwing around with things. So no note.

    I do catch up on some email, make some notes for the day, get dressed, kiss my family goodbye (which, knowing I could sparkle out to 1933 at any moment, I take very seriously these days), grab my work bag and vintage “go-bag” and head out the door, knowing the me that I was 12 days ago would be popping back in a couple hours from now.

    Little did I know that I wouldn’t be making it to work that day, or for the next couple days. Because of what happened halfway down the front walk to my car, I’d never get the chance to see the breakfast I would put in the microwave that morning. It would be long gone, in the garbage, by the time I returned home.

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  1. By Rich in Posts

    As I wrote recently, I’ve traveled to the future on two occasions recently. They weren’t particularly enjoyable trips, in no way similar to the warm “been-here-before” feeling journeys that trips to the recent past can be. I have to admit, for a long time, the feelings those trips to the past engendered were a reason I thought this whole thing could well be purely psychological, simple (if that’s possible) hallucinations. Let’s face it, for most of us, the past creates feelings of nostalgia. We remember the good things that happened, and forget the bad. There was a time when I thought my “trips” there were just fantasy.

    Those theories ended when I started bringing things back from the past, and in one case, the future. Simple things, nothing that would be at all incriminating if my house were searched. Just things from sometime else. I’ll follow up on my future souvenir at another time, but will say that it was a strange event in its complete normality. Truly fascinating, but again, another time.

    I think the good feelings a trip to the past creates are good because my past, for the most part, WAS very good. I’ve lived a fortunate and pretty happy life. I won’t say it’s been a life without challenges, but it’s been a happy one. I think if my life had been filled with tragedy and trauma, my trips to the past might be much darker than they are. In this, I believe I’m blessed.

    But, I will say that a startling thing about time traveling to the past is how vivid it is. Even a creative right-brainer like myself apparently tends to dull the colors out when memories are stored in our brains. Everytime I’ve traveled more than a few months past-ward, I’m struck by just how vivid and colorful it all is. We tend to think of the past like photographs before digital cameras, and anything before the 50s we’ve almost entirely experienced as black and white. I think seeing 1933 Indiana in the flesh will be shocking, since I’ve seen so many pictures of that time, and of Belton specifically, rendered in the black and white photography available then.

    Though it’s a very, very bad idea, I’m seriously considering adding a small digital camera to my TT go-bag.

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The Time Traveler's Blog is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.