Publishing the past

Old news is no news. But is this true with weblogs and web diaries? Recordings of daily happenings rely on timeliness to be of any interest. Other kinds of entries, observations and little stories, probably keep a little longer. Still, it isn’t at all obvious to me whether old entries have any place in weblogs.

Fathom this is for me more than a running report on my life and thoughts. It’s a place to reflect upon and restructure experiences I’ve had and the way I see the world. So for me adding old notes and diaristic entries makes sense. The question is: does it make sense to make them public?

This line of questioning goes awfully close to the quagmire of whether there is any point in keeping a public journal in the first place. It is, inescapably and always, a narcissistic endeavour. But there’s more to it. Writing regularly is something everyone should do. And the pain and pleasure of doing it publicly is an encouragement at the very least.

I just recently heard another very good argument for keeping a weblog that had never occurred to me before—at least not as clearly as it was put to me. A personal weblog allows you to meet amazing people you would never have met otherwise. Perhaps this point was driven home by the fact that the person who told me this was someone amazing I met through her weblog.

As for whether or not putting up old writings is of any interest to anyone, I don’t know. But I’m not gonna let that stop me.

---

• December 1, 2003 at 6:05
  in About blogging

There is 1 other entry posted on this day.