I have not written another piece for the smolWeb yet in
2022 mainly because I have been doing end-of-the-year work
on my journal.
Believe it or not, most of my thoughts and notes do not
end up online. The whole process has been developed over
years, and certainly not with anything resembling
deliberate, straight-lined progress. I have quite a few
notebooks filled up with my scribblings. From those, I
learned how useful it is to label the pages and work on an
end of book "index," which really is a table of contents
placed at the back rather than the front.
The thing is that on reflection I found that I really did
prefer typing. It is quicker, it has tools like spell
checking, and once the writing starts to pile up, it is
much tidier, particularly as I am from the now dying breed
of people who formed habits with information involving
folders.
Problem: I then grow terrified of the data getting
corrupted. Back ups are, of course, the solution, but now
let's talk about what kind of back up. USB sticks would be
the exact place I have lost data before, so that in my mind
is only a tool, not the solution. I could load all of my
files onto google's cloud, but I believe most readers of
this understand (and are part of creating) the vibes that
make that not my favorite plan A, and certainly not what I
want to make my only back up.
So this year I printed my journal files on paper. I made
two copies, one for a shelf at home, one to be buried at
work. After I printed them, I spent my weekend creative
time writing that table of contents, which I still will
place at the back, for tradition's sake.
Doing this is a great way to look back at the year, so I
hope to make this what I do with journals for the
foreseeable future, though I may more the review time to
December, using my winter break, and then I would be back
at creation by January.
When I told my wife that each copy used up 75 sheets of
paper she said "maybe you should have printed on both
sides," to which I replied I had in fact done so. Now,
each of my smolWeb pieces are also copied to the journal,
as are many of the emails I sent. This provides a record
of how my thinking develops, which is often as much, if not
more, interest to my future self as what I think. However,
there are a great many discoveries, mysteries, and puzzles
that I noted and then just forgot I knew, and rediscovering
those, and then indexing them so they can be relocated at
a glance, is a true pleasure.
The borderline between the Enlightenment and Romanticism is
one of the best examples; I learned a lot and that exposes
errors in how even the educated look at them, and I am drawn
to want to understand more if I can ever get more time, and
though I can't right now muster the time or energy for an
explanation of what draws me back to it, that's the thing
about a journal: it's just for me. There is so much I
don't have to explain to my future self. Instead, I just
have to have decent reminders.
It's a writing process with much less friction. But to get
the most meaning from it, periodic reviews are called for.
While I am reviewing, I might as well do my back ups.
Throw in some deep paranoia about the future of networks
and you have the system I am describing.
--
This work is hereby in the public domain.
Do what you want with it.
