To Write And To Remember

I admit that I not only save oth­er peo­ple’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be remind­ed of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemer­al nature of blogs in gen­er­al, com­bined with the fick­le nature of ado­les­cent writ­ers still try­ing to “define them­selves” on a free medi­um, that gives me the itch to save. So many writ­ers I used to fol­low have changed domain names, start­ed pro­tect­ing their entries, or delet­ed their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be for­got­ten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exact­ly the way it was spo­ken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there any­more, does­n’t mean they were nev­er spo­ken.

There are con­se­quences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

8 comments

  1. There are sev­er­al blogs I wish I had done that with. Not only writ­ings, but pic­tures… but now I just have faint mem­o­ries of the pic­tures, or just mem­o­ries of the feel­ings that the pic­ture evoked. Did I ever send you the link to where my old blog entries are archived?

    • Pictures are def­i­nite­ly worth sav­ing too. You may remem­ber the essence of an entry from the words, but images slow­ly fade with time.

      You nev­er gave me the link to your old archives, although you did men­tion it before. Send away!

  2. Yes, same here. Wish I’d saved. And wished some­one would have kept blog­ging or left it up or point­ed for­ward instead of van­ish­ing into ether. It emu­lates real life I sup­pose, the com­plete dis­ap­pear­ances with noth­ing but neur­al traces.

    • I think it also emu­lates real life in that things aren’t kept unless some­one has a desire or pur­pose.

  3. I agree… I usu­al­ly end up remem­ber­ing and link­ing back to stuff that inspires me or moves me…

    But I’ve nev­er thought to archive some­one’s entire blog.

    It’s eas­i­er to pre­serve a momen­t’s bril­liance if it’s writ­ten, I feel, rather than spo­ken… I think spo­ken words can lose their orig­i­nal mean­ing if they aren’t tak­en down and pre­served cor­rect­ly.

    I love read­ing through your old posts.

    • One of the rea­sons why I start­ed sav­ing blogs is because I would link to a great entry by some­one, only to have their blog dis­ap­pear. It’s all over my com­ments as well; if you go back just two years and vis­it the pages of peo­ple who have left com­ments, most of them don’t work any­more.

      The prob­lem with spo­ken words is that they’re often spo­ken in the heat of the moment, or per­haps not thought through. It makes it that much eas­i­er for the orig­i­nal mean­ing to be lost.

  4. I did­n’t one could grab an entire blog…I just grab pho­tos (not to repro­duce, just to keep). Not yours though, since I would ask you first, and since I would pre­sume they’d always be there. They will won’t they? I think of your blog like a book. I would take it off the shelf as I wished and replace it, as if it would always be there.

    • I hope to have my blog around for a very long time, after I’m dead even. The book anal­o­gy is great. I hope oth­er peo­ple view my blog the same way.

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