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years of journaling |
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December 15th, 2019 |
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A few of you brilliant gopherites have been talking about the |
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length of time they've been blogging [0,1]. 20 years is a lot of |
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blog posts whether collected on the web or gopher. It's great to |
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see collections like this all together surviving so long. |
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[0] It was 20 years ago today |
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[1] On 16 years of blogging |
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I've had people go spelunking down into my own blog [2] archives |
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before and I have to say it's a really cool feeling. Journaling is |
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inherently about yourself. When another human decides to spend |
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their time reading your personal thoughts and history, it's very |
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flattering (at least to me). |
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[2] tomasino blog |
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There are technical blogs aplenty which focus on code or math or |
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science or whatever topic that isn't the self. They're great too, |
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but I don't see them the same way. I'm sure they provide great |
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interest to people when they're published, and interesting history |
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to those that come later. Sharing a personal blog is so much more |
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intimate. Keeping one up for an extended period of time is its own |
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type of vulnerability. It's not just showing your timely thoughts |
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of today, but also the cringe-worthy worries of younger you. It's |
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easy to spotlight the mistakes, the lack of understanding, and the |
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ideas that you'd eventually grow out of. That's beautiful stuff, |
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if horribly embarrassing. |
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I started journaling when I was 14. I have a shelf of paper |
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journals sitting over there --> that I flip through still. I still |
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do some paper journaling these days, too. Those moleskines aren't |
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going to fill themselves, after all. |
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It wasn't until 1998 that I started writing a blog online. I was |
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off to college and learning how to do all this crazy web stuff. |
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I kept text notes on that website for a while (lost now even to |
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the wayback machine, sadly). I later moved to livejournal and kept |
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a pretty decent journal there with a ring of friends. Thankfully |
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I harvested some of those old posts before nuking my livejournal |
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account years later. Those earliest posts on my blog now were |
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written there. They've been updated a few times to move to |
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wordpress, jekyll, and now hugo. I keep that stuff in git now, |
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too. Better peace of mind, for sure. |
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Anyway, I don't have much more to say on the subject. It's pretty |
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cool that I've almost got 20 years of journaling history up on the |
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internet myself. I hope I have much more to offer down the line in |
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gopher as well. |
