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Robert ShieldsThe Man Who Wrote a 37.5 Million Word Diary
Date of Birth: 17.05.1918
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Robert Shields
Robert Shields, the man who wrote a diary of 37.5 million words, required 94 boxes to store his meticulously recorded details and the minutiae of his own life since 1972. Among his entries, there were even detailed descriptions of urination and defecation acts, along with his body temperature, various states, and, of course, his thoughts. He would have continued writing even longer, but a stroke in 1997 interrupted his plans. Nevertheless, what he had written could have been enough for a world record.
Early Life and Career
Robert Shields, born in 1918, resided in Dayton, Washington. It is known that he worked as an English teacher in the local high school and also served as a spiritual mentor. Shields would spend four hours a day alone with his diary, sitting on the back porch of his own home and systematically describing everything that happened to him throughout the day.
Meticulous Record-Keeping
Shields diligently recorded his daily body temperature, blood pressure readings, and even described acts of urination and defecation in his diary. The details in Robert's diaries could surprise even the most prepared readers, raising questions about his sanity. For example, one entry reads, "July 25, 1993, 7:00 am: I cleaned the bathtub and scraped dead skin from my feet, removing layers of dead skin. 7:05 am: Went to the toilet, the stool was copious and solid, urinated approximately a pint, used five sheets of paper."
On April 18, 1994, he described his daily routine of cooking macaroni and cheese in the oven, eating it alongside his partner and noting the replacement of a light bulb. These peculiar entries spanned many years, only ceasing when Shields suffered a stroke in 1997, which physically prevented him from continuing to write.
Legacy
Robert Shields genuinely believed that if he stopped writing his diary, his life would come to an end, which is why he could not stop. He continued making his strange entries for many years, with only the stroke finally halting his writing. When Robert passed away in October 2007, he left behind 94 substantial boxes of diaries. They are now stored in the library archive of Washington State University, to which he donated them in 1999. Interestingly, thinking of future generations, Robert even left samples of his nose hair for possible future research.
Although Robert wanted his diaries to be read no earlier than 50 years after his death, excerpts can be found online today. Unfortunately, the word count fell short of being recognized by Guinness World Records as the author of the longest diary in the world. The counted number of words in his entries amounted to 37.5 million.
In addition to notes, Shields' diary also contained a significant number of poems, but the overwhelming majority of his texts were dedicated to documenting his life. Unofficial information suggests that during the years of keeping his diary, Robert Shields essentially documented his own life every five minutes.
Interestingly, Robert himself struggled to answer the question of what motivated him in the early 1970s when he began writing his monumental work.
