I want to start to write my memoir in 2024

My immigration story is one worth writing down while the details are still relatively fresh in my mind.

Why I want to write a memoir

I never thought about writing a memoir until my life started feeling like a movie (and not in a good way). My years in the UK before getting citizenship were more dramatic than I ever expected them to be.

While I’ve written a lot of posts on the UK immigration system, none of them get into the worst of my immigration experience. I’m not comfortable publicly sharing that stuff, and I don’t think it would be wise to.

That said, I do have a post planned for this year that starts to touch on that experience, but with limited details.

I want to write a memoir because I want a written record of what I lived through. I think it’s a story is worth writing down.

Even if I never publish it in some form, I want it written down for me. I want to write it while I can still remember the details. I can already feel some memories starting to get hazy. The longer I wait, the hazier they’ll get.

I also want to write it so I don’t have to feel the weight of carrying around some of my memories. I sometimes replay things in my mind because I don’t want to forget them, but I don’t want to keep thinking of those things.

How I want to write it

As a content designer, I want to try approaching writing my memoir like a piece of content I’d design at work.

I have years of notes written down about the years I want to write about. I see these notes like user research insights. I want to takes the notes and do some affinity mapping with them.

While I think there’s a chronological element to telling my story, there’s also a thematic one, which is why I want to group certain notes together that might not have happened at the same time.

I then want to arrange my groupings in the order I want to tell them. Once arranged, I can start to write.

Will this work in practice? We’ll find out.

A not very SMART goal

You’ll notice the title of this post is that I want to ‘start’ to write my memoir. I don’t necessarily want to finish it (highly doubtful I could do it in a year). I also don’t have a particular endpoint I’d like to work to.

So this is not a a very SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goal. But that’s intentional.

Writing down these memories is going to make me relive some experiences that will likely hurt to think about.

I don’t want to set a specific goal to work toward because I want to give myself permission to stop if the writing does me more harm than good.

Only an end-of-year progress update planned

As part of this goal, I don’t plan on writing regular updates on my progress. I don’t want to add any extra writing to a goal that already involves a lot of writing.

The only thing I do plan on writing is an end-of-year progress update reflecting on how it went.

So that’s all on this topic for now. Let’s check in at the end of 2024.