It's almost 1:00 a.m., but that's nothing new. I'm a night owl. Just this week I discovered blogging. To be exact, it was Tuesday evening at the quarterly lawyer writers meeting when another lawyer who is also a writer shared her insight into the publishing world, insight gained from her experience with her first book deal (check out her blog at http://carrie-me.blogspot.com/). She documented her writing and publishing journey on a blog. What exactly is a blog? I can't tell you how many times I asked myself that question, not ever feeling brave enough to ask it out loud to the world of everyone-else-who-seemed-to-know. But something about the fact that this other lawyer writer had a blog made blogging seem less obtuse. I thought I'd do a little research and find out more about this whole blogging thing, take an interest, maybe even - gasp - try it out. And here I am.
For those of you who don't know, a blog is short for "Web Log" and is, basically, an online journal. I adore journals. I've written in them all my life (my husband reminds me that this is not normal). So what could be a better fit for me than an online journal!! But, alas, there are deeper, more pressing reasons that I am drawn to blog. First of all, 2008 has been and will continue to be a busy and exciting year in my life. Our daughter (first child) will be six months old on Sunday, I'm smack in the middle of writing my first novel, and my husband and I will be making big decisions over the coming weeks (purposely vague). Bottom line - there is a lot of stuff to write about these days.
Which brings me to my second reason: fear of a house fire. You see, I am afraid that one day our house will just burn to the ground and my three dozen, old school journals that document my life in my own handwriting will be reduced to ash. I know it will be from some unforeseen cause like a direct lightening strike, a wiring mishap, or an overzealous dryer. But the cause won't matter because my journals will be gone. After my husband, daughter, and dog, my journals are the only things in this house that can't be replaced. I know what you're thinking - "Silly Kristen, just make a copy of your journals or get them on the computer." Believe me, I've started down those paths before. The problem is that when you've spent most of your life writing down experiences, thoughts and events like I have, you don't want to spend the rest of your life (it might just take that long) retyping or scanning those pages onto a computer. I even considered buying a fireproof safe, which is still a possibility although it is heavy and expensive and too small to hold all of my journals in its titanium, super-heat-and-melt-proof cubbyhole of an interior.
Then, like a bright, shiny light from above (cue angel chorus music), I discovered the beauty of the blog: eternal life. Here I can type away about my day, my life, the ups and downs of the year as it passes and always my words will stay a few internet clicks away, fully printable, and easy to save and copy.
Blogging is my new best friend. And this is my first official post. Yay!
Holiday
-
In true middle class British fashion we've had a holiday in Devon, staying
in a charming cottage near the sea. Lunatic Child and the dog were living
their...
7 years ago
Posts
2 comments:
Great! I'm also a big fan of Reason #1.5 (your friends can follow your exploits from afar).
But a word of caution, if I may, on Reason #2: the "eternal" status of online repositories is at best unproven over the truly long haul (say, Taylor’s childhood, to pick a benchmark) and, in many cases, demonstrably ephemeral. I have no statistics to back up my statement, but I suspect strongly that this is one of those "more people die in car accidents en route to the beach than in shark attacks after they get there" sort of things, where there is danger of overlooking rudimentary evil in favor of a spectacular one.
Neil Kapadia's lightning strike notwithstanding, and God forbid the contrary, but I'd wager that, statistically, you're a lot less likely to have a catastrophic house fire (since you don’t live in the California foothills … ) than you are to have catastrophic data loss due to technical failure, or a short-notice service shut-down following sale or bankruptcy of the online provider (this has already happened to me TWICE with photographs). And, of course, fire can strike a server farm just like a house; there’s certainly plenty of wiring, heat, etc. Plus, my belief in the data redundancy of free service providers (as opposed to cash-basis archive services like Iron Mountain, etc.) is, well, minimal.
So, don't risk it (the journals are clearly important to you). Make another online copy somewhere else too (the easiest way is to e-mail the text of journal entries to an ISP e-mail account that can be accessed remotely; be sure to pick e-mail run by a different company than the blog provider). Or, hey, paper got you this far … hit “PRINT” on a rolling basis (either right after the entry, or perhaps a week later if you’re trying to capture folks’ comments also). Even if, now, that’s just the backup.
You crack me up... totally crack me up! I can't wait to get the "deets" on these big decisions - let me know when you can. We love you all and hope to see you soon.... JCD
Post a Comment