A few years ago I started what is not really a blog so much as a collection of chatlogs and email conversations. I more or less just copied and pasted snippets of conversation with various people on various themes. I think I thought it was quite brilliant at the time. My sister dug it up recently and reminded me of it. You can read it at your leisure here. There are a couple of guest posts from Nathan as well as my stuff. I had forgotten how long it went on (apparently a year and a half or so, but very sporadically posted. Not the same kind of workmanlike copy churned out on a daily basis here). Here is pretty much the most entertaining thing that I posted there:
From : Luke
Sent : February 13, 2004 1:44:28 AM
To : Adam Sandiford
Subject : new words
while these were invented sometime ago, they deserve to pass into the public domain:
voluntold Verb. To be involuntarily volunteered for something. When people volunteer you to do things. Statements like “that sounds like a job for luke†come to mind. Coined during a Calgary youth rally that had 1 million tasks that just sort of appeared……
Peasantvision. Noun. From the roots peasant (lower class) and vision (to watch). Style of TV enjoyed by those less fortunate. Unknown origins (but I know two things. I am friends with them and they are poor)
luke
Looking back on things I found funny then, I often wonder what exactly was going through my head. I realize that not everything is Oscar Wilde-level satire or even Adam Sandler-level comedy but good grief, what was I thinking? I felt the same way when re-reading old journal entries from the high school era (since destroyed). I was so terribly angsty and felt that it was a good idea to write it down, apparently.
Something that I foresee becoming a larger and larger problem as we move forward in time (at a blistering rate of 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, etc. etc. etc.) is the backlog of information we have behind us and how frightfully embarrassing it all is to older eyes. I’ve got a couple of stories kicking around that I wrote and illustrated in grade school. I am red-hot blushingly embarrassed to read them myself or to have anybody else know what is in them (and I realize now that every person who comes by will want to look at them. They’re frozen in a foot-thick block of ice at the back of the freezer so you’ll have to wait). I’m sure people will be the same way with pictures on Facebook or things they put in their MySpace or what have you (side note: Windows Live Writer has MySpace in its dictionary but not Facebook. Subtle social networking support from Microsoft!). Those pictures from that party will make you feel pretty dumb when you’re explaining them to your kids.
I am not for a moment suggesting that people should stop doing dumb things. I’m pretty sure the sun would fail to rise in the morning if they did. I’m just suggesting that it might be wise to consider the permanence of the record of such activities. By all means, learn from your mistakes but maybe try and make them someplace where there isn’t somebody with a camera phone.