Dusty old blogs

In order to avoid wasting time on LinkedIn, I'm spending time reading the archives of a blog I enjoy.  I don't recall when I first discovered Gin and Tacos, but Ed reminds me of at least two of my close friends and also myself in some ways.  I'd like to think we'd actually be friends in real life.

But the point of today's post is Old Blogs.  As I've said before, people dust off their old blogs every January, promise to publish more, and then quickly lose steam before Spring is even on the horizon.  

When it rains, it pours down here

But even beyond those who keep trying, there are countless blogs out there that have just been abandoned.  Some are still hosted while others show the Domain For Sale page.  And because of that, how many blogs site to these dead pages with links that now go nowhere.

It's sad because often times the post needs that link or image to pull off the point.  I'm sure some of my ancient posts are the same way, though I think less so than most.  I try to write in a way that the link or image supplements rather than augments the post.  Although obviously there are times when I didn't.  I'm going to try and make an effort to avoid that in the future.  

Of course, I've already broken that by linking to Ed's dormant site instead of spelling out the URL. And that brings up something.  While there are no hard and fast rules for blog posts, there are best practices, AKA things that bring you more success than other things if you are looking for that sort of thing.

On a post I'm working on, I have a reference to a movie on a page that writes about movies.  I should link directly to that page, but instead, I was lazy and just linked to the site.  If the site goes bye-bye, it doesn't matter.  But if the page is taken down, or the blog reformats in some way, a curious enough reader can still find the reference.   

hahaha.  Readers are too lazy to do that much work.  

These old letters are pensieves and horocruxes

I've been working Project Ancient Letters since September of last year.   These letters have lived in a box that I've carried around from apartment to apartment, condo to house.  These old letters bring back memories long forgotten. 

Some people can look at that box and just say yeah I don't need these anymore and toss them without reading them.

Some people will re-read them but still throw them away. 

Then there's me. My original plan with these letters was to re-read them and then pitch them.   But someone suggested that I scan them which seemed ridiculous at the time.  But then I realized that I have free access to an industrial sized scanner at the office and had no set timetable so why not.  I'm certainly becoming very good at working that scanner.  If my current job doesn't work out, I guess I can find work at a Kinkos.

These letters were very much like Pensieves (or Horocruxes in some cases), transporting me back in time. 

I just scanned the last ones before the end of last year, so now comes the next phase.  Returning them to the senders that I'm still in touch with.   I'll keep a few that have some special meaning for me, at least until the next time I need to clear some clutter, and the rest get bonfired.

It's interesting how people will reference something I obviously wrote in a previous letter, or perhaps mentioned on the phone, but it is just vague enough that I cannot tell what we are talking about.  I can see traces of when my confidence started to erode and my depression setting in.

If I had the bandwidth, I'd write a post about some of the key writers.  Maybe I still will even though I've already returned some of the letters to their senders.

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