I started this blog one night in October 2006, nearly on a whim. I mean, it was like I did the dishes, checked my email, and started a blog. I gave very little thought to where I was going with it, how long I would do it, or anything.
More than seven years later, here I am. I’m very proud of BoWilliams.com. It contains some of the best writing I’ve ever done. And as I’ve never taken any more than four days off (and usually only one or two), there is a lot of it.
But…but. Sigh.
I’ve only very rarely modified or removed a post after I’ve published it. I’ve been proud of this blog as a continuous document of my life and thought.
There are parts of it I don’t like so much anymore.
Now thankfully, none of it reads as badly to me as, say, my high school journals or papers I did for English classes. I read over some of that and cringe at how bad it is. And then I consider that this paper was probably one of the top two or three in the class, so almost all of the others were even worse! I’m sorry, my dear English teachers.
With some older posts here, it’s more like “well, I don’t think that anymore.” Or “wow, my threshold for swearing used to be much lower.” Or “that would have been more effective with a little restraint.”
I don’t know what to do about it. It’d be pretty egotistical for me to think anyone would care in a larger sense, and I don’t. I do fret a bit though about the fact that a deep URL still pretty much tells its own story, outside the gestalt of the blog. And then I think it’s egotistical for me to suppose anyone but me cares about the gestalt of the blog.
Babbling. I’ll stop. Enjoy your weekend.
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I remembered writing some about this before, but had no idea I’d inadvertently plagiarize myself so badly. That’s funny. 🙂 I suppose it’s validation of the integrity of my thought, though!
Bo, if you get serious about either removing or modifying an old post I think it would be interesting for us to know why. In other words, you could link us to an old post that does not reflect your views anymore and your new post could be why and how your views have changed. I think that would be very cool!
Dave, thanks. I don’t think I’d modify posts. The thing that most appeals to me philosophically is picking maybe two dozen posts from each of 2006-2010 and leaving those up, and pulling the rest down. Still chewing on it. It’d be horribly tedious without a programmatic solution, so that serves as a check on it right there.
I’ll definitely consider an old vs. new concept as you describe. That could be good!