My name is Robert-George de Stolfe. I go by RG most of the time. I created the de Stolfe Journal way back in March 1986 as an idea to keep my family updated with what is going on with my life. The journals produced in the 1980s were much less about my own life and more about randomness. Really, it was about whatever I wanted to put in it. After all, I was only 13 when I started it! Since it was 1986, as you would expect, the journals were literal pasteups that I then photocopied, folded, and mailed with a stamp to maybe a dozen family members. Some of the journals were copied onto colored paper: blue, pink, goldenrod… (remember that color!) By the late 1980s, I started using computer printouts (you know, dot matrix…) that I still pasted up and photocopied. I had a gap of several years, but once I had the ability and the means, I started producing the journals fully by computer in the early 1990s. I continued to make the journals erratically through the 1990s. By 1998, I stopped for almost 15 years.

In 2012, I had a major life change that made me want to start creating the journals again. I rethought of the idea after someone I knew started producing a newsletter for their ministry journey. Instead of coming up with a new name, I simply rebooted the journal with a modified name of de Stolfe Journal Candid to distinguish it from the original series of long ago. For several years after, I created issues every month with occasional special issues in between. At first, I just attached them to plain emails, but then later started using a free email subscription service. In March 2016, I created a celebratory issue of 30 years since the first issue! Even by then, I accumulated many issues far exceeding the small number I created in the 1980s and 1990s. I also scanned the old journals, cleaned them up, and made them into PDF files, which was something I had wanted to do for many years. By late 2018, I dropped the Candid part of the name since it wasn’t really relevant anymore, which allowed me a sort of rebrand. I continue to make the journals, although rarely monthly anymore, and have no real plans to stop. I like making them, and for me it is in fact a journal, just not the kind that is a book people write in, and a personal historical record.

I was born and raised in Miami, Florida in the 1970s and 1980s. I have lived in Florida, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas and have traveled to most of the states in the southern half of the United States (even if just by way of the airport, car, bus, or train!). While I am not a “traveler”, I do like writing about my travels providing details about things that are often ignored and about whatever else I feel like including.