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       years of journaling
       December 15th, 2019
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       A few of you brilliant gopherites have been talking about the
       length of time they've been blogging [0,1]. 20 years is a lot of
       blog posts whether collected on the web or gopher. It's great to
       see collections like this all together surviving so long.
       
 (TXT) [0] It was 20 years ago today
 (TXT) [1] On 16 years of blogging
       
       I've had people go spelunking down into my own blog [2] archives
       before and I have to say it's a really cool feeling. Journaling is
       inherently about yourself. When another human decides to spend
       their time reading your personal thoughts and history, it's very
       flattering (at least to me).
       
 (HTM) [2] tomasino blog
       
       There are technical blogs aplenty which focus on code or math or
       science or whatever topic that isn't the self. They're great too,
       but I don't see them the same way. I'm sure they provide great
       interest to people when they're published, and interesting history
       to those that come later. Sharing a personal blog is so much more
       intimate. Keeping one up for an extended period of time is its own
       type of vulnerability. It's not just showing your timely thoughts
       of today, but also the cringe-worthy worries of younger you. It's
       easy to spotlight the mistakes, the lack of understanding, and the
       ideas that you'd eventually grow out of. That's beautiful stuff,
       if horribly embarrassing.
       
       I started journaling when I was 14. I have a shelf of paper
       journals sitting over there --> that I flip through still. I still
       do some paper journaling these days, too. Those moleskines aren't
       going to fill themselves, after all.
       
       It wasn't until 1998 that I started writing a blog online. I was
       off to college and learning how to do all this crazy web stuff.
       I kept text notes on that website for a while (lost now even to
       the wayback machine, sadly). I later moved to livejournal and kept
       a pretty decent journal there with a ring of friends. Thankfully
       I harvested some of those old posts before nuking my livejournal
       account years later. Those earliest posts on my blog now were
       written there. They've been updated a few times to move to
       wordpress, jekyll, and now hugo. I keep that stuff in git now,
       too. Better peace of mind, for sure.
       
       Anyway, I don't have much more to say on the subject. It's pretty
       cool that I've almost got 20 years of journaling history up on the
       internet myself. I hope I have much more to offer down the line in
       gopher as well.