Then, panic set in
April 27, 2006 | 9:49 am | Internerd | Girly | 1
Even though the archives of this site only go back to January 2005, I have actually been blogging since July 2004. My first blog was started much like this one — under the guise that I would use it to hone my writing skills — but it ended up being filled mostly with photos of vacations I’d taken with Christopher and little else. My life got pretty busy and I abandoned the blog for a while and then I felt like I needed a fresh start so I decided to delete everything, because the internet is forever, right? Best to get rid of all the evidence.
In the time since then I’ve often regretted deleting that site. I still have all the pictures I posted there and I didn’t really lose any significant writing, so I think the real reason I wish I still had those archives is because I read things like the interviews on LeahPeah and all those bloggers have been writing online for half a decade. There’s some sort of imagined authenticity in my head about that — like, they were there first, before it was a fad, before Technorati started reporting that 75,000 new blogs are created each day.
In 1997, I was an analog blogger. I made paper zines, staying late at night at my Dad’s office to use his photocopier covertly and then passing them out at punk rock shows. I kept notebooks full of writing that are still stashed in a hatbox in the closet of my old bedroom at my Mom’s house. I wanted, for a long time, to go online, but I knew nothing about html or how easy it could be. In fact, the first time I remember even hearing the word “blog” it was being made fun of in a 2003 article in The Onion, and it didn’t sound like the type of website I was thinking of starting.
Sometimes this wistfulness passes over me and I wish I still had that old site, just for posterity’s sake, and when this feeling hit me last night I got it into my head that I could recreate the old site with the help of Blogger, a Google cache and the Wayback Machine. No such luck. There is no proof anywhere that my site ever existed in the first place.
I guess maybe the Internet isn’t forever.
Yes, the internet isn’t forever.
My previous blog (still coming to terms with that word) started in 2000 and I have it tucked away, kept safe from prying eyes by password. Unfortunately I have forgotten the password so now even I can’t access these pages that I know are floating about in the binary ether.
I stopped writing because I hated the facetious character I was portraying myself as. And I hated my middle class whining. And I hated the fact that I wanted other people to validate me. In fact, where your comments thing says “leave a reply” mine said “validate my existence, you dogs”.
I guess I grew up a bit. Now I kid myself into thinking that I’m providing some kind of service.