A Blog About 'The Blog'--What Now?

The stuff we put on the internet may always be there but will our great grandchildren be able to access it? Even if our photos, announcements, journals, stories, etc are floating in cyberspace forever, we won't be here forever....what then?

There was an interesting article...on the internet...that tried to inform the masses about the amount of information that is going to be lost over time and how future generations will not have the generational links to know how long-lost family members lived in the past. Our grandparents and parents were wonderful story tellers...we are not, and all those photos stored on a Super 8 or VHS tapes or worse yet, on a cell phone, are not going to stand the test of time. What to do?

I am a compulsive writer. I never wanted to be a nurse or a teacher...only a 'journalist'. I have journals for my garden, journals for my children and grandchildren. I have daily journals and list-journals to remind me of things I want to write in journals. And then there's the Honey's Place Blog. It has been a record of births, deaths, travels, and life's joys since 2006. I've loved being able to type almost as fast as I can think. As arthritis has crept into the crevices of my finger joints, the blog has allowed me to continue my love of journaling.

The article above kind of scared my narcissistic self. Even though I don't plan on going anywhere 'off-earth' for some time yet, I want my future family members to know how this family lived and some things about our culture that affected and formed the people they have become. Each time I have an opportunity to go back through some of these blog ramblings I am left with a few things: I love the way I record things; I have a talent for writing; as I'm reading past blogs I can feel the excitement and/or amazement I felt when I wrote it; and I don't ever intend to stop writing.

Now that was the long way of saying I decided to print off the blog. There are self-publishing companies, such as Blurb.com that have software which converts a blog into book format, and I haven't discounted that route. However, until I get the time and energy to edit hundreds of pages of text and photographs I need to have the paper copy in my hand. I had no idea how much paper that would entail!

I started printing two weeks ago...printing 8-10 blog entries each night. After a week I still had not made a dent in the total number of entries but I had to buy another package of paper and another black ink cartridge. I started printing 20-30 entries each night as I wanted to be done before Christmas but I couldn't help but re-read some of them as I was printing. It was wonderful!

I was able to once more feel the extreme joy of visiting my first grandchild and watching him play in the bath. That crazy 17,000 km trip through Mexico in the beloved LuvMachine made me laugh with our sheer ignorance of doing such a trip and then made me want to do it all over again. I got goosebumps reading about how I described learning I was going to have not one, but two grandaughters and then getting a third! The photos and story of my 'Near Death' experience with the rattlesnake in Arizona made my heart pound all over again! I smiled reading how Ty, Tori, Gillian, and Olivia went from newborns in diapers to independent little monkeys that had me wrapped around their fingers. Once again, I saw the most wonderful sunsets, beautiful landscapes, and amazing places with my darling Wayne. Our recent family holiday in Daytona really happened.  And AFRICA!!! OMG...it WAS real--I DID go!

I finished printing it a few days ago and now what? I've got about 1400 pages that I've got to get into a couple of binders before the pile falls over and a whole new problem of putting it back in order happens!

But here's the lesson. While we can't live in the past it's important that our family knows where they have come from, who helped to mold their personalities, who looks like Great-Grampa and who has the subborness of Aunt Whomever. If I'm not good at telling them, I'm going to continue writing down those things...and from the look of the pile of paper/books beside me, I think I'm doing that.