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How do I take care of myself? After reflecting for a few weeks, I have come to a few concrete conclusions:

I write a bullet point list of every significant thing that happens to me in a day
I post and utilize a website I created from scratch that is meant to emulate me
Write longer, more reflective essays or pieces
Edit together videos and photos I take into collages for remembrance

These are the technologies of the self (“[what] permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness”) (Foucalt, 1988) that I utilize on a nearly daily basis. As each pertains to my spiritual, mental, or bodily well-being the lines blur.

I began my bullet point lists in a notebook with “How I Would Like To Live” on the front in a painted marker—a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. What I write down in this book will be how I want to live, because how could I consistently live my life against my own wishes? In addition, the first few pages are a short, impromptu essay about my goals with the lists, things like “This is out of a desire to give myself the life I think I deserve, that’s what living—as a verb not a state—is… I’ve never been able to maintain a diary, that’s not what this is… it is an account” and a set of light rules that contain sentiments like, “Take action to find joy and purpose (these should be similar if not the same)... Make attempts to engage your friendships as much as you can… Write, read, or create for yourself every day.” When Foucault writes about “Taking care of oneself [becoming] linked to constant writing activity,” I resonate deeply with him and the stoics. I feel as though I can most concretely access myself through active means of reflection (namely writing but also video editing, literally watching myself and loved-ones back, piecing us together in a mosaic of data to encompass a feeling or moment). The primary place stoics, Foucault, and I differ though is a second motivation: self-reshaping and recollection.

My memory is the worst of anyone I’ve ever met. I frequently forget that days have passed, entire people I’ve met or conversed with, books I’ve read, and even major life events. The bank of memories I have access to only extends back to age 11, everything before that point is semantic memory (Folescu). I claim to “recall” my second grade classroom, in reality I know of a story about me color-coding the bookshelf because it was retold to me from the third person perspective (interestingly, my mother, the reteller, wasn’t even present for the event; I am three degrees away from my own memory in many cases). This memory deficiency is a result of several things, not least of which is a near-constant “brain-fog” due to chronic fatigue, but it puts me in an interesting situation for my “self.” I cannot draw upon the formative years of early childhood with authenticity when crafting my narrative, and even recent happenings slip between the cracks, leaving me with a splintered first person continuity—an experience I have not found in many others my age. This is why I wanted to begin documenting my days in concrete, easily repeatable ways. Writing pages upon pages of accounts in a journal is not something I am capable of for more than a few days at a time, but targeted recollection in a 120 second process is. So in addition to my “self care,” I am engaging in a form of “self preservation” or even preemptive “self reconstruction.” What can I make of my “self” and my consciousness knowing that I am influenced by years I do not remember (I know how to count and do long division although I lack the memories of it/I am sure I am in part the way I am because my mother threw me happy birthday parties before the age of seven, but if I cannot recall them what am I to make of it?) What I am left with is the rejection of Locke and the embracing of the continuity I can cobble together.

My body is mine. My memories are mine. The memories I’ve lost may also be mine, but they cannot be the concern of my “self.” So in response to this, I have taken on the project of using my memory and body to reflect, daily, on my self’s workings. Through technologies self-initiated but with a long history in Western thought tradition (which was a fantastic surprise when reading Foucault) I am turning my “self” into a project, getting ever closer to both knowing and taking care of myself. This coupled with the practice of speaking to those I love about myself validates the process. The act of tracing my feelings and progress on paper or on documents is one thing, but as Susan J. Brison notes, “We need to tell our stories, making sure to listen to those of others, especially when they’re at odds with ours” (28). As she writes about trauma recollection and self-rebuilding after traumatic incidents, I see myself in her work. In addition to seeing past and present feelings in her writings on shattered selves in the aftermath of trauma, I have found her discussions of validation and active changes to the self in my independent behavior. I am striving for a particular kind of self, one separated from past traumas and present self-frustrations; this is why I have begun several of the self-technology projects. Even in high school, when I found myself in the throws of a great deal of overwhelming change, I began to film myself and friends nearly constantly in an effort to better remember my life, see myself more clearly, and be able to reconstruct myself/various moments in an editing room to preserve them. My self-reconstruction ideals appear to be more literal than many writings on “the self” describe, and I am not yet sure what to make of that.



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