Wednesday 18 December 2019

House-keeping and flashbacks

I will revive this old blog for a while, as I want to get away from the constant response to the moment (in Facebook, etc) and dig around a little in the past.

First of all, I have worked on computers since about 1999, and that formed part of my work, as well as play, so I have a lot of back-ups, moved on from old computers.  Of course, stuff must have got lost in all the shuffling over 20 years, but some treasure still exists.

For instance, as my work included figuring out the newly-growing internet, and passing on that knowledge to both library stuff and customers (we stopped calling the 'borrowers", and 'users' sounded a bit druggy) I had to experiment with everything, so often had a couple of accounts (so I could look at an account from inside and out).  I have no idea how many leftover blogs may exist (or have since died), and websites, and FB accounts, etc.

Most became inactive when social media took over, and we all moved into 'the moment'.  Of course, occasional memories pop up, on anniversaries, etc, but generally we live in ephemeral, linear time.

I miss deeper immersion in mythic time.

And so much of that past got recorded.  These items seem like the digital equivalent to the boxes of papers that still sit in my den in Cardiff (some of which, but not all, will move up here to the cottage).  I will have to go through the boxes and get ruthless.  Not easy.   I have the same relationship to all this digital material, as back-ups generate duplicates and variations, etc.  However much pruning I have done, these things get copied around.

So anyway, will register my progress here, and that includes working on finishing the autobiography, which has hovered about for years, incomplete.  Again, it got taken over by 'real-time' interviews and chats, and posts, so that I got bored with much of the material (both memories, and opinions) and didn't feel like going through it all again.

Maybe this rummage through the old stuff might spark a new burst of motivation.  We'll see.