Correcting a story never told

Here’s an update to a story about something that never happened. Well, it happened, of course—Facebook told me that much—but I never mentioned it here, not last week and not three years ago. I corrected the story on Facebook, and planned to do so here, too—but there’s nothing to correct. I guess instead, I’ll correct THAT.

Thursday of last week, I made a kind of “slice of life” post on my personal Facebook, the sort of thing that I sometimes make into blog posts, but not always, or even necessarily often. Instead, I wrote a post specifically for the blog, one about my house number falling of the house. That post began as a Message I was going to send to a friend because I’d told him about my dilemma over changing the house number, and I thought the story’s development was funny. As I wrote the story, it grew too long for a Message, so I changed it up, especially when I realised it was the sort of story I like telling here: Unimportant, lighthearted, at its heart, about my developing life—and also longer than I usually post on Facebook.

Earlier on Thursday, I posted this story to my personal Facebook:

A few afternoons ago, I sat down in my chair (probably to check something in my iPad), and suddenly realised how hot it was. The sun was just starting to hit the doors to that patio, so that meant it’d get even hotter. I looked over at Leo, who was panting a lot. And that was the moment I realised that my heat pumps were still set to heat (although both were on, neither was running because it was too warm in the house). I don’t know if I’ve ever before still had them on heat this late in Spring. [emphasis added]

So, I switched the lounge A/C to cooling—after changing the batteries in the remote (I haven’t touched it in months). It quickly got comfortable in the living area.

I turned the unit in my bedroom off completely, because it still gets cool at night, but that won’t last forever. The ventilation system usually switches on in the evening, which helps cool down the whole house, so I don’t need the air on in the bedroom yet.

This week has been quite warm, relatively speaking. For example, today Hamilton shared the national high temperature of 24 (75.2F). My office and the third bedroom aren’t heated/cooled and my office is too warm in the day, and so this week reminded me, yet again, that if I decide to stay in this house long term, I’m going to have to do something about that.

This summer is likely to be hotter, drier, and perhaps windier than usual, but at least I know my living areas will be comfortable. I also love the fact that running the A/C will be free in the daytime—one of the main reasons I wanted the solar panels (I know most summers will be hotter than they used to be).

I guess you could say that no matter the weather, it’s gonna be a cool, cool summer at my house.

Just an everyday, unimportant sort of story, but one that lets friends get a glimpse into what my ordinary life is like. I never shared it here mainly because I was busy working on getting the house ready for the family to come round for dinner the next night, and it was late by the time I was able post the house number story. I just ran out of time, and the next day, and every day since, I forgot all about it. Until yesterday.

On Sunday, I saw yet another Facebook “Memory”, but this one disproved the claim I’d made only a few days earlier: I have, in fact, turned on my cooling later in Spring than this year. I shared that FB “Memory” yesterday and noted I was wrong last week (see the screenshot up top). I suppose it’s possible that I’ve made a post on Facebook correcting something I said in an earlier Facebook post, but, if so, it’s probably not happened often—not that it matters, of course.

Yesterday’s “Memory” reminded me that there are a LOT of things that I never talk about anywhere. Obviously, a lot—probably most—of the stuff I don’t talk about it utterly unimportant (and, um, probably a lot of what I do talk about is, too…). Coincidentally, I was reading an old blog post as I researched a possible new post I was thinking about writing. In that 2017 post, I said this:

Over the past ten years, I've written about what I'm doing, and I've made podcasts and videos, so there are things that three decades from now—if I'm still around—I hope I can turn to and remember these years, and feel them in a way I can't with my life in the 1980s. Sure, I kept a journal off an on from the mid 1970s into the mid 1990s, but they're incomplete, especially about what I was thinking and doing.

The fact I never blogged about turning on the cooling in 2020 isn’t even remotely important, but it did remind me that I need to write down anything I want to have a hope of remembering. Also, even if it sometimes feels (to others as well as myself…) as if I talk about everything, this is a reminder that there are plenty of things I never document anywhere. The fact is, I wouldn’t know about when I turned on the cooling 2020 if I hadn’t said something on Facebook at the time, something that was served up to as a Facebook “Memory”, and so close to when I’d just posted an incorrect assumption on Facebook.

What I wonder is, how many things that I might like to remember have I never mentioned anywhere? Still, I’ve now corrected a recent story on Facebook thanks to the reminder from an older story, and I’ve also told the story about correcting a story that wasn’t here to correct. I thing those loops are now all closed—well, as far as I know…