Nice to see your new blog! (I didn't notice until the second post.) So far, so good. I'm reminded of how, when Google+ was shutting down, I downloaded all my posts, and looking through them, I...
Nice to see your new blog! (I didn't notice until the second post.) So far, so good.
I'm reminded of how, when Google+ was shutting down, I downloaded all my posts, and looking through them, I found little I cared about. They were links to articles that I thought were interesting at the time and opinions about the news. I didn't put much that was personal into them because, after all, it's public.
Photos seem more valuable, particularly old photos. Photos of people and things you see frequently don't seem valuable at the time, but they will be later. After the past becomes unrecoverable, they will be what you have left. Maybe the same is true of writing, at least the more personal kind. I usually write in abstractions, but the details seem more important.
Life moves on. I don't look at photos that often, but I'm glad I have them.
I've recorded some accordion performances, but I suspect I'm never going to be all that interested in listening to them myself. On the other hand, I have a scratchy cassette recording of my grandmother playing the piano that's irreplaceable.
Thanks! I'm hoping this blog will help me avoid my habit of dropping article-length comments on people's heads here. Also, apologies for the, uh, several times I have done that to you. You...
Nice to see your new blog! (I didn't notice until the second post.) So far, so good.
Thanks! I'm hoping this blog will help me avoid my habit of dropping article-length comments on people's heads here. Also, apologies for the, uh, several times I have done that to you.
You mentioned your Google+ archive, and I feel the same way about my reddit accounts. I archived them before I took them down, and I do have some significant posts in there, but those are fully mixed in with so much incidental, throwaway stuff. Even on Tildes, where I put a lot more effort into what I write, the stuff I'd want to genuinely save really only makes up maybe 10% of my history at maximum.
In thinking about it, I think a lot of human communication is meant to be ephemeral, and holding onto it simply decreases the signal-to-noise ratio of the stuff that's worth holding on to. That's what I'm hoping to do with my writing moving forward -- make stuff that's worth holding on to.
Nice to see your new blog! (I didn't notice until the second post.) So far, so good.
I'm reminded of how, when Google+ was shutting down, I downloaded all my posts, and looking through them, I found little I cared about. They were links to articles that I thought were interesting at the time and opinions about the news. I didn't put much that was personal into them because, after all, it's public.
Photos seem more valuable, particularly old photos. Photos of people and things you see frequently don't seem valuable at the time, but they will be later. After the past becomes unrecoverable, they will be what you have left. Maybe the same is true of writing, at least the more personal kind. I usually write in abstractions, but the details seem more important.
Life moves on. I don't look at photos that often, but I'm glad I have them.
I've recorded some accordion performances, but I suspect I'm never going to be all that interested in listening to them myself. On the other hand, I have a scratchy cassette recording of my grandmother playing the piano that's irreplaceable.
Thanks! I'm hoping this blog will help me avoid my habit of dropping article-length comments on people's heads here. Also, apologies for the, uh, several times I have done that to you.
You mentioned your Google+ archive, and I feel the same way about my reddit accounts. I archived them before I took them down, and I do have some significant posts in there, but those are fully mixed in with so much incidental, throwaway stuff. Even on Tildes, where I put a lot more effort into what I write, the stuff I'd want to genuinely save really only makes up maybe 10% of my history at maximum.
In thinking about it, I think a lot of human communication is meant to be ephemeral, and holding onto it simply decreases the signal-to-noise ratio of the stuff that's worth holding on to. That's what I'm hoping to do with my writing moving forward -- make stuff that's worth holding on to.
No need to apologize, your replies are some of the best ones on Tildes.