Read "Mars is my Destination" by Frank Belknap Long online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Right at this point there has to be a shift in the way I've been recording events as they happened, because what happened next took place elsewhere, while I was flat on my back in the hospital. By "what happened next" I mean. to me and Joan personally and to Commander Littlefield and the Martian Colonization Board and everything I'd come to Mars to take cognizance of, and do my best to change for the better.
I know, I know. Ten million separate events are taking place all the time on Earth and on Mars and by no stretch of the imagination could they be thought of as an immediate part of this record. But when the threads all start to draw together and tighten about you in a destiny-altering way you have to keep the time-sequence in order and record developments as they take place. Otherwise when they become of immediate concern later on the entire picture will seem out of focus. The frame will start lengthening out and the people in the picture will be out-of-kelter also, and scattered all over the landscape. The only way you can keep them sharply in focus is to record what happens to them _when_ it happens.