Oh danny boy, the pipes the pipes are callin'

I have about twelve pages of the civil war journal left to transcribe and with every entry I complete I get more and more despondent. The task of setting down these words has been the only purpose I have known in years, possibly ever. I realize that doesn't speak well of me exactly, but that doesn't make it any less true. And anyway, I like to believe that I was meant to do this - that the diary languished for generations, fading and disintegrating, until it could fall into my lap. Truly conditions are perfect - technology is at such a point that things are researchable, and...well...I have no life. But to give myself a tiny bit more credit, I have always had a genuine interest in the topic, I am tenacious enough to keep searching even when I hit a seemingly dead end, and I am sentimental to a pathological degree which makes me love, adore, and wish to honor this man I never knew - a soldier whose name was forgotten long before I even existed, who died 102 years before I was born. I understand it's not right for me to waste my time on this earth documenting lives lived by others, rather than living my own. But it's the most rewarding thing I have ever done and when I finish, it will be the only thing I have ever completed. I will be so lost when I've finished, and so sad to see him go.