On sentimentality

[clementine]

Mirrored from Oh Clementine. You can leave any comments there.

I have pondered quitting blogging in the past and even done it for a few months. I thought it would be impossible for me to ever take a break that long, saying "I have considered taking an extended break, à la Kaylee, but I don't think I could stay away for too long." I have to wonder what I meant by "extended break" and "too long"¹ – I did manage to take a break, but, for me anyway, blogging is a habit. Now that it's been a part of my life for over three years, I can't just quit.

Although I have managed to take a long break, I could never, ever, ever delete my archives. There are a few bloggers I follow who have deleted everything once, sometimes multiple times. I can't imagine ever doing that. I still have backups of my FanUpdate entries², and I have a lot of the updates I posted by hand³. Maybe in five years I'll be embarrassed by what I wrote, but this blog is an archive of myself. In fact, to paraphrase something Amanda once said, a personal blog is a lot like an autobiography that's always being added to. I just cannot fathom the idea of deleting everything. I would be devastated if that happened⁴.

Part of it, I guess, is just the fact that I'm sentimental⁵. Yes, my younger self can be quite embarrassing, but it's nice to have a clear representation of what mini!Clem was like, not just memories that have been distorted by years gone by. It's also nice to stumble upon entries that I posted months, even years, ago, entries that I forgot even existed. And, for purely aesthetic reasons, I love how my archives page looks all filled out.

What about you? Could you ever delete your blog? If you did, would you keep backups somewhere else, or could you actually erase all evidence that it existed? Or, like me, are you far too sentimental for such things?

1. that post is 9 months old now so I can't be sure [↩]
2. I've been meaning them to start converting them all to Wordpress, but I've been lazy [↩]
3. though if you asked me I couldn't tell you where exactly they are… [↩]
4. and I do back up regularly! [↩]
5. which definitely fuels my really bad pack rat tendencies [↩]