DYING FOR CONTENT ANALYSIS (July 19, 2012)
I often think of my Residua as a superb repository of information about myself. At least for the last thirty-seven years, every major twist and turn in my path is in plain view, and not only to myself. Although the record of my life has become much more personal in the last decade or so, the record of previous decades is personal enough, as well. Also, I often think that I will eventually immerse myself in that repository of information. This I consider a task worthy of old age well spent, but I occasionally wonder about the best way to approach the task. In this regard, content analysis has long attracted my attention (“Know Thyself,” October 2, 2008). Along these lines, I have made an early attempt to classify my life cycles in terms of key words describing them (“The Seven-Year Life Cycle,” October 23, 2008). My magnum opus on the World Wide Web offers an excellent search facility for such an analysis. The only question that remains is when will old age arrive, so that I can start with my task in earnest. This is a hard question, of course. The way things stand at present, I will give myself another ten years or so. But content analysis will surely draw me ever closer to the task in the meanwhile. Ah, I am dying for it already!