Unflushed blogs

I did something a bit disheartening today. I went down a rather long list of bookmarked blogs and cleared out all the ones that haven’t been updated in the last year. It was disheartening because I read through all this super outdated material on abandoned URLs and ended up feeling a terrible sense of loss. I deleted 10 blogs! That’s 10 people who just decided one day to stop writing and updating the faceless masses of the internet on their daily adventures. No more stories about wacky teaching experiences, no more diatribes on customer service at Sears, no more cherry pie reviews for out-of-the-way diners in the Midwest. Boom, all gone. And left to float in increasingly absurdity in the expanse of cyberspace.

At first it was kind of neat to see what friends were doing in early 2008…and then it was late 2007…and as I went along the ending dates got older…sometime in 2006…and after that I couldn’t see properly due to a welling up of tears in my eyes. What had happened to these people? What became of their virtual voice? And would it perhaps have been better if the blogs had been taken down instead of left to sit with unchanging pages?

In the past several years I’ve moved 5 times and each time I’ve taking fewer things to the next place than I original brought to the last. This is in part because every time I move I say, “I’m never packing up and moving this stuff again!” which translates to me actually not packing some things up and just giving them away to whoever is close by. I’ve also learned the value of traveling light in life. Honestly, most people have too much stuff. And the longer you live, the more stuff you get…until one day you die and then your loved ones have to sift through all your stuff and ask, “Why did he have so much stuff?”

My point being: you really only need a few** things in life (**”few” being defined by lots of factors that deserve their own blog entry).

This philosophy can be carried over to blogs. At this point in my life I’m working hard to move forward…moving to New York, getting a new job, starting a new life that will challenge and inspire me…so when it comes to stale blogs, I just wish they had been flushed away instead of sitting idle saying, This life has stopped and will not move forward anymore. March 2007 was the height of my life and there is no reason to regale you any further with commentary on my dare care for dogs.

Woohooshhhh! Outdated blogs and last week’s Wal-Mart goldfish down into the depths of the departed.

I wonder what I’ll eventually do with the JaBlog…