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The shame of old (travel) blog posts
February 27, 2005: I posted about jetlag and date confusion, about how I can't keep a calendar straight, how my expat life made that even harder for me to do, and how oh, we're going skiing and also, I can't wait to eat noodles later! It is written as though you know all the details of my life, who's in it, and actually care about those things.October 31, 2007: I posted a review of a 1966 movie about Hawaii. I managed to cross reference that review with some sharply written references about Hawaiian history and then, I tied all this in to the frustrations and vanities around the sun break guide to Hawaii I was writing at the time. I found a way to complain about writing a guidebook to Hawaii. Imagine.
March 17th, 2009: I posted a link choked name dropping round up of a day I spent at SxSW,the Music, Film and Interactive mega-event that takes place in Austin, Texas, every year. Do I tell you who these people are or why they're important? No, I do not. Do I tell you why I'm in Austin at all? Nope. I make all kinds of assumptions about what and who you know. I proudly alienate all of my readers who aren't there at the time. Way to go.
Old (travel) blog posts. They're there to keep us humble. The shocking typos and editing oversights. The tone-deaf attempts at humor and self deprecation. The utter failure to provide any kind of context for, well, anything. The vain assumptions that these things matter to me, therefore, they must matter to you. I'm talking about my blog, of course, your archives are a library of beautiful syntax, of sensible contextualized advice, and entries that stand alone on their own merit, each one a well formed travel essay or service piece that could live a healthy life outside of the confines of your blog. Right? Right.
A punishing little WordPress plug in called Advanced Random Post tortures me every time I refresh my site. It works its nefarious self-esteem busting evil by publishing, in the second slot on my home page, a post pulled at random from the archives of my site. On the one hand, this is a good thing. It pulls up selections from a series of guest posts I ran one April while I was traveling, 30 days or so of well written stories from friends and fellow travelers who kindly sent a story my way to keep my blog from going dark. It reminds me of, oh, that time I took a tour of the shipping terminal on Seattle's Harbor Island or visited the Ballard Locks when they were full of running salmon. I see these old posts and I think, "Wow, that was a great day out."
But Advanced Random Post also presents writing from my days as a volunteer for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Those aren't about travel! What was I thinking! And oh, no, I didn't really choose to write about how tired I am after that hike in the Austrian Alps, did I? Not when I could have either posted a simple photo or told you how to do that hike yourself. That would have been useful to my readers. Instead, it's two paragraphs of whining about fatigue. Why did I think you'd want to read that?
Every time I load a page, I'm confronted with the mistakes (and less often, triumphs) of my past. I can see the trajectory my writing has taken, I can see things change. I'm not the same traveler I was in 2004 when I started my blog in its current incarnation, and I'm certainly not the same writer. Seeing that old work reminds me of places I've been, of what's changed. Sometimes I'm pleased but mostly, I'm just embarrassed. Did I really publish 600 typo choked words about an hour in a tea house? What was I thinking?
But Advanced Random Post also presents writing from my days as a volunteer for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Those aren't about travel! What was I thinking! And oh, no, I didn't really choose to write about how tired I am after that hike in the Austrian Alps, did I? Not when I could have either posted a simple photo or told you how to do that hike yourself. That would have been useful to my readers. Instead, it's two paragraphs of whining about fatigue. Why did I think you'd want to read that?
Every time I load a page, I'm confronted with the mistakes (and less often, triumphs) of my past. I can see the trajectory my writing has taken, I can see things change. I'm not the same traveler I was in 2004 when I started my blog in its current incarnation, and I'm certainly not the same writer. Seeing that old work reminds me of places I've been, of what's changed. Sometimes I'm pleased but mostly, I'm just embarrassed. Did I really publish 600 typo choked words about an hour in a tea house? What was I thinking?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bill Aug 31st 2011 2:32PM
Not to worry -- you write some really good stuff.
Michelle Aug 31st 2011 5:20PM
But at the same time, these were the things that were important to you at the time you wrote them and, like any writing, may not seem important now, especially when plucked from the obscurity of the past, out of context.
If we always write with the mindset of will this be important years from now, then we might lose the impact that the posts might have now. I mean it's great to have all the "and you can do it, too" facts, but sometimes the honesty of talking about the exhaustion and all the other warts of travel can make the post just as valid.
Melanie Renzulli Sep 1st 2011 10:38AM
I agree with Michelle. I've been thinking about this post since I read it yesterday and the part that really got me was, "That would have been useful to my readers." I think a lot of us have lost sight as to what a blog is: a log, or diary, on the web. Why do we always have to be writing for someone else's pleasure? Isn't it also useful to be able to look back at what we were doing and feeling at a certain time in our lives?
My two cents.
pam Aug 31st 2011 6:58PM
Michelle -- I'm not arguing that things need, always to be service oriented. Far from it, especially given that I'm a staunch supporter of Team Narrative. Or that I have to write for posterity every time I touch the keyboard. Some things, like my work on the campaign, are very much of a time and there's nothing to do about that.
But it's not enough that it was important at the time. "Dude, I am so tired!" does not a good blog post make unless I provide a compelling story of how I got that way. And some of my old stuff, it pretty much reads, "Dude, I am so tired!" End. Uh, that's all I've got? Really?
Lauren Braden Aug 31st 2011 9:59PM
This is so awesome! I torture myself by reading my old high school and college newspaper articles.
Pam Sep 1st 2011 11:10AM
Melanie,
I hope you read the response I left for Michelle around "usefulness." It's just below your comment here.
Memoir is all about retrospection and I love writing that way. It is good to look back and see where we've been and where we're going. That doesn't make the writing good by default, though.
As for what a blog is, I happen to think it's an easy format for publishing work online and not much more. What a writer does with it is up to them.
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