In the spirit of TRUST, I let the February theme of collections guide my thoughts. I really don’t collect much in the way of material possessions particularly (sure, I have an eclectic mix of items between home and my office), but I realized I have an extensive digital collection of writings, coding, and images. While the physical collections require introspection (as in I will not be discussing such matters here), the digital collections require a bit more thought and effort. This post, for example, is intangible; I cannot physically hold this piece of writing unless I printed it. Most of the materials are in my cPanel, archives, digital “clouds” (which sound ethereal), and old hard drives on broken laptops (oh, oops, I guess we do have some physical attachments that need attention). However, these digital collections hold past selves — an intimate portrait of the woman I’ve been and the woman I’ve become.
Exploring these “younger selves” gave me a chance to see my own progression. Most days I’m focused on watching a semester-long cohort progress over a 16-week period, but I have the unique lived-experience of writing for much of my adulthood. I realized my voice — the wording and style I use — is still true to the person I am now, but I also see some level of maturity. On the other hand, I see the propensity to slip into old habits: bad behaviors that do not fit with the person I wish to become. In the process of trying to find my place, be it on the World Wide Web or out in the wild, I don’t want to lose that which makes me ME. I see that I have achieved some of my goals, but I also see that I stand to lose so much more if I do not watch my words and my tone.
Someone recently mentioned that we have lost the ability to be uncomfortable and seem to feel obligated to fill that discomfort with (usually) bad habits: we doom-scroll instead of making connections with people; we order online instead of leaving the house to make a purchase; we sit and watch TV instead of going outside and being active. In the process of making life more comfortable, we have made it far too comfortable. The concept carried over into professional development sessions that highlighted the importance of being more physically active during the work day. Of course, how does this all relate back to digital collections and unraveling the self? There’s an expression: step outside your comfort zone!
I think Susannah and I agree on one main thing: throwing away (deleting) journals (blog entries) isn’t an option. Those are the words of my younger selves, and they are all valid individuals in their various stages of life. Not a single version of myself should be silenced or censored for the sake of comfort. On that note, I should get uncomfortable reviewing and unraveling who I was to figure out who I am know — who I really want to be. Am I looking to live someone else’s dreams? Is this who I really want to become? Obviously, several projects are dreams of my own, so I can confidently state that I know I am on the right path. However, there were other goals: why did I set those goals? Why did they fail? Why did I change my mind? Was the initial goal truly my aim, or is there something else I’m overlooking? (Ah, so delightfully vague!)
In the meantime, I have considered the idea that I will archive work after an arbitrary period of time. Although the “Internet never forgets,” broken links tend to prevent me from revisiting old interests. I think the AI scrapers had more than enough time to gather data from my old ramblings — human readers require proper prodding and don’t exactly make it to this point anyway!
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