Eons (”Lovin’ life on the flip side of 50″) has a utility for seniors called Life Map that allows you to create a visual timeline of your life. The software is not the best but almost anyone can use it.
First off, there’s a timeline divided into decades that forms the base of the map. You simply click on a decade to show all the years. Then you select an icon from thirteen different categories, such as Learning, Homes, Military, or Accomplishments. You are about to create what is called a “Life Bit.”
On a new page you can fill in the form for this Life Bit: a brief description, location, and date. [NOTE: if the date is not filled in correctly, it won't "take"!] You also have the option of uploading a photo associated with the event you’re recording.
Eons provides a tutorial, suggests ideas for Life Bits, and has a page on scanning photos. There is also an historical timeline which runs across the bottom of the Life Map. Events there can serve as memory triggers.
While I find this somewhat interesting, it’s really just another variation on scrapbooking your life. There are autobiographical bits, but the result is not autobiography. Nor is it memoir. No one viewing it ever gets to know you.
One of the most helpful exercises I ever had my students do was to pick a holiday. I then had them write about that particular holiday at three different times in their life. For instance, Christmas when you were a child, when you were first married, when your first grandchild was born. Do you see where I’m going? Each instance reveals more about you, what you valued, where you were positioned within the family.
The part that made the exercise into memoir was the taking of those three events and applying the perspective of the present day. Sure, that’s how you remembered Christmas as a kid — from a kid’s perspective. But looking back, as a parent, as a grandparent, what do you see now? This is the heart of memoir, a real Life Map as it were. Where have I been as a person — not a record of events — but growth as an individual.
