Friday, February 17, 2012

Urgent: Project Hard Copy.


I was at home a few days ago for an eye appointment which gave me time to take another pass at the randomness that is my teenage bedroom. I'm trying to slowly go through everything and get it cleared out. Well I found a box of my old journals from high school and started looking through them. I started keeping a daily journal the FIRST day of freshman year of high school. When I went off to college, I put most of my journals in a box, duct taped it closed, and put it in storage. Then at college I discovered blogging.

Seriously-- every moment of my high school life is documented. I wrote EVERY SINGLE DAY without fail. It makes me sad to think that from 2007 to 2012, I don't have any journals to show for myself. Then I got the idea that I should create a hard copy of my blogs. You never know what's going to happen to the internet (it could be obsolete in 50 years-- who knows) or to certain blogging sites (like Blogger or Typepad). WHO KNOWS WHAT COULD HAPPEN!

Suddenly it felt very URGENT for me to print out all my blog posts and put them in a binder. Those blogs document my life from age 18 to 24! *vital* so much has happened in those years! I met my HUSBAND for crying out loud.


Have you ever felt something SO strongly that it feels like INCREDIBLY urgent that you complete it? That's how I felt about this insurmountable project. So I went and bought a few hundred archival safe page protectors, a new binder, a ream of copy paper, and new ink cartridge. It may seem like an incredible waste of paper, ink, and time to do this.... but is it really a waste to preserve your life? I started blogging August of 2007. So I started printing last night and made it through January 2008. I HAVE PRINTED OVER 200 PAGES JUST FOR THOSE 6 MONTHS. That's when I realized that this is going to be a bigger project than I thought. But I WILL accomplish it. Just... little by little. Over time.

What are your thoughts on this project? It makes me sick knowing how much paper I'm using, but I just don't know what will happen in the years to come... I want my great-grandchildren to be able to read through it like a book. I'm going to back them up onto my external harddrive too eventually. But I want a hard copy to go along with my huge box of journals. Is it conceited to want to preserve your life? Maybe no one will ever care about it. But then again maybe they will? I have no idea.

<3
E

3 comments:

Megan said...

Hi!
i remember reading something awhile ago about a website that would turn your blog into a book. It would take all of your posts and put them together like what you are doing. I don't remember the name of it but I sure if you did some searching you could find it. I think that it's a good idea what you are doing. I wish I was more diligent at writing in a journal or blogging. It is great that you have so much of your life written down!

miss teacups said...

I totally understand. I too have a box of journals from high school. I even have journals from when I was super young...I think I started when I was around 6 years old, haha. LOTS!

Anyways, I try my best to write in my journal now but a blog is just so much easier...blogs don't tell the personal details though so I definitely still try to write.

Megan said...

Elaine!
what i was telling you about is called Blog2print if you are interested.