Monday, June 06, 2005

blog as column vs. blog as memoir

I'm still wading through my past, editing hundreds of pages and 10 years of journal entries into...something, maybe some early version of a memoir. These journal/blogs take on a new usefulness once they get big enough, b/c then you can search for things, words, emotions, people, movies, places, and see these patterns that you didn't know were there. I guess the data mining folks know this already, know that our identities are in these numbers and letters if you know how to find them. All I'm saying is its fun (if not unhealthily narcissistic, perhaps masturbatory) to mine your own data.

Blogs that are more like columns, more about other people's lives (heads of state, etc), or those that include links to other blogs or sites seem geared towards present-day usefulness. Not that they aren't of lasting value (what isn't?). But I guess I'm just partial to the ones that chronicle your everyday life.

Maybe I've gotten too wrapped up in recording my life to prevent my death. Maybe I shouldn't have done such a half-assed job of it for so long. I should just have sections of my life that go unchronicled. There's just something maddening about how fleeting a really great day is.

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