Table of Contents

I recently found the blog I kept from 2006-2008. I won't link it here, but I am working on copying over some of the less cringe entries. Sometimes it's nice to spend time with the person you used to be. I, for instance, used to be a person who knew a lot about the [18th-century French aristocracy].

There's something uniquely revealing about encountering your own writing from 15+ years ago. Unlike photographs or physical mementos, personal writing captures not just events but thought processes, priorities, and your particular voice at that time.

Digital Gardens as Continuity

This experience highlights one value of maintaining a digital garden—creating continuity between past and present selves. Unlike social media's emphasis on immediacy and constant updates, digital gardens allow ideas to evolve while preserving their history. The garden format acknowledges that our thinking develops over time, with some ideas growing from seedlings to fully-developed concepts while others may lie dormant before eventually flourishing.

Selective Preservation

Not everything from our past digital lives deserves preservation. I'm being highly selective about which entries to migrate from the old blog, focusing on those with enduring value or interest rather than those that now make me cringe.

There's a curatorial process in deciding which parts of our past selves to integrate into our current digital identity—which in some ways mirrors how memory itself functions by preserving certain experiences while allowing others to fade.

I'm considering starting a collection of notes on digital preservation practices and the evolution of online self-representation. There's something fascinating about how our relationship with our digital past differs from our relationship with physical artifacts from our history.