Should I delete that?
Have you ever revisited old blog posts to edit or delete things out of them? Or make them private?
People have told me they’ve done this before. Either for privacy reasons or embarrassment reasons or whatever. It’s never crossed my mind to do it. In the USA the Internet doesn’t forget! Hee hee.
All joking aside though, I was looking through my Rome archives for a photo for a post idea* and thought… these posts don’t represent who I am now. At all. They represent who I was, then. A 21 year-old, finding her way in Rome. On her own.
Some things I read were downright cringe-worthy/awkward (special points to anyone who met me through the blog and has been my friend since then!!!).
But I keep the posts. For diary/sentimental purposes, and to remind me how much I’ve grown. What’s my blog if not a documentation of my life and (hopefully) progress toward becoming a less annoying person? Ha ha.
But every time I look through those archives, I wish I could go back in time and re-do Rome with who I am now. Not that anything held me back from travel, or that I wasn’t street smart or independent. I’m just a bit less of a loner now. And I know more. But! I wouldn’t have gotten here without that experience. So. Yeah. It just makes me excited for when Steven and I have the resources to travel all over the world together!
You know, just visiting places featured in Star Wars films by myself (here’s another, in Spain). Ha ha. If ANYONE can name the location of this and the film it’s from, you get a Star Wars related prize.
And I’ll never regret tossing my high school journals. That timeframe does NOT need to be remembered! So thankful I didn’t blog then. Or have Facebook. I think keeping kids offline until college is a goooood idea (<— somewhat sarcastic here… but only somewhat).
*Which was cold medicine induced, so it may never see the light of day. Or the light of a computer screen.
Themocracy
I went through and deleted a lot of posts from my blog because they were stupid “I ate ____ today” type of posts. Anything that had a glimpse into my life I kept for sentimental reasons, even if I cringed while reading it. However, when I apply to go back to school, I’m going to have to rethink my Internet presence. Not sure what I’ll do though, I’d hate to actually delete my blog even if I’m not posting much (AT ALL! ha) right now.
I am happy you commented! You were one of the people I thought about when I wrote this, as you told me you deleted a bit. I think your deleting process makes sense (but wait! What if in 20 years you wonder what you ate 14 mos ago?!?!? :P). Why do you need to rethink it for school?
Just in case any admissions committees decide to search for me. Maybe I’ll just make all of my accounts private for a few months?
Yeah, and then just try all the searches to make sure that works! 🙂
I should toss my hs journals. For real. I have deleted an entire blog, but there wasn’t much in it. I’ve never gone back and edited posts tho….
BURN EM!
Oh yes. Those HS journals belong in the incinerator!
It is cool to go back and see how we’ve grown over the years even if it’s cringeworthy. 🙂 I haven’t edited or deleted or made private any of my posts and never intend to since I don’t post anything really personal.
I am considering tossing my middle school- HS yearbooks though.
What? Keep the yearbooks! Your future offspring will want to see those pics!
Is that the Naboo palace? I could be wrong. I don’t need a prize though, I just like Star Wars too much not to comment. hahah
I’ve deleted a couple pictures from really old blog posts, just cause I don’t need my side boob on the internet.
I’ll go to Rome with you! That would be so fun!
Si! But you have to tell me where it is 😉 Wait. Didn’t you win my last SW prize?!
Side boob is meant for instagram 😉
Let’s go!!! Italy is really easy to get around (if you have patience for late trains) and SO MUCH FUN. let’s do Maratona di Roma in March! http://www.maratonadiroma.it/?lang=en Think the boys will come?
I did! I don’t want to be greedy with the prizes. 🙂 hahah
Duh! Instagram! On my way to post a boob pic now…
That would be so incredibly fun! The boys would have to come so Steven could take race pics and Kevin can hold our stuff – you know, the things they do so well at races. 🙂
Ha! It would probably be one of the more interesting races to have those jobs at!
I truly dislike most of my early blog posts. I was trying to fit into a certain old, to write the way others did, and I just find them inauthentic now. I’m not saying the blog is great now, not by any stretch, but I think it better reflects my voice and interests.
But isn’t that great to know that you have found your voice?!
I still have my angsty high school journals, college journals and stuff that I wrote when I was new to town and living by myself. I definitely cringe when I read some of that stuff (mostly the HS/college ones) and wish I knew then all that I know now (and was more confident in myself, geez!), but it’s also really cool to read a lot of it and watch myself growing up and becoming the person I am now. I actually wish I had continued with journaling – I stopped like 2 weeks before I met Bob and I wish I could go back and read about that as it was all happening. The last thing I wrote was what a major life funk I was in, and lamenting that I’d probably never meet anyone, which amuses me now.
I haven’t deleted any blog posts (though some could definitely stand to be removed or majorly edited), and really only do minor edits here and there within a day or two of publishing things.
Do you think you will ever pick up hand journaling again? I love that you proved yourself wrong with your last entry 😉
Ha ha! I do edit typos/correct things on posts (and add a note if I changed something).
Oh, yeah, I did start again last month when I was feeling particularly introspective. I think a lot of the reason I used to do it so much more often is that I didn’t really know anyone, so I didn’t have anyone to talk to and work stuff out with. It was cheaper than therapy, ha!
It’s so cheaper than therapy (writing and talking it out!). I think that is why so much of that old stuff made me cringe – it was things I should have talked out with a close friend, but I didn’t have any for four more years after that.
Aw, well we’ve all been there at some point, I think. My thing is just that some stuff that I couldn’t figure out then was SO OBVIOUS, but I either didn’t get it or was just lying to myself or something. Live and learn though, right?
I deleted a bunch of stuff right before I went to Antarctica. I gave my blog address to a lot of coworkers, neighbors, family friends to allow them to follow our trip, but I didn’t want them to be able to go back and read all the personal and tmi stuff I’d written in past years.
I think it is hard sometimes to strike the balance between being personal enough so people relate to you and understand who you are as a person and not sharing too much that you are embarrassed by it later.
I still have my paper journals from jr high/high school. So cringeworthy! But I’m not sharing them with anyone, and it’s my own trip down memory lane, so I haven’t tossed them. I kind of wish I had my childhood diary.
I still paper journal occasionally, when I’m trying to work through personal stuff that I’m not comfortable sharing publicly. And I still have that daily happiness journal from you, although I need to go back and write posts for the past few weeks, oops.
I was pretty active on LiveJournal through college and wrote a lot on there that should not be public (relationships, breakups, petty friend stuff, partying, etc). That journal is “private” now. It’s interesting to go back and read it.
I think I have gone back and taken down or edited some old posts on magmilerunner.com. I think. I don’t remember what though. Probably just stuff that doesn’t reflect what I want that blog to be now.
I agree with you that even if the posts are cringe-worthy they still represent who we were at that time. I think the only time I’ve deleted or removed a post is when I used someone’s name and they got upset. Although, sometimes in those cases I’ve just made the post private so they couldn’t see it 🙂
I have a blog that I created from the summer going into college, from high school. It is soooo embarrassing. I recently found that it was still public–WITH COMMENTS. I immediately made it private. No one wants to read that! Ha!
The website that I used to blog while in college got shut down. uJournal. It no longer exists and neither do any of my posts. Sometimes I miss them but mostly I’m glad that all that angst can be forgotten!
So sometimes it’s good when websites go away! LOL. I wonder if they are still cached in some corner of the internet.
The service I was using to add a comment feature to my hand coded posts went away, and I think that is also a good thing 😉 (well, that my responses are gone – not the feedback from other people)
I deleted my blog. I kind of regret it because it’s not like I hated anything that was on there. It was just my ramblings. I deleted it shortly after I got pregnant because I hated life then. Thinking about food or running or anything else really made me want to hurl so I deleted it. I think a blog will make a comeback after I pop out this baby (1-3 weeks to go!)
I am sorry you felt so awful then! Good luck in the next few weeks!!! Exciting! 🙂
I delete stuff on Facebook all the time. Especially pictures! Sometimes I feel bad for today’s youth in that they almost never can tell what might be posted online about them or photos posted of them…we never had to worry about that!
LOL – like deleting stuff other people tag you in? Or old pics?
Yeah, I have had that discussion with a few of my friends who are parents – how they decide what to post of their kids online, since a lot of it could be searchable in the future! For that reason, I always try to ask for permission to post people and their kids, cause who knows if they want it out there!
I have kept a journal since high school and I love looking back at them but I agree some of it is so cringeworthy!!! the only post I ever went back and hid was the one I wrote on finishing is winning about my relationship with Ryan. It had no place on my blog and I didn’t want to revisit it.
I’m not sure how much I would edit myself if I had a blog that was widely read, but I don’t especially now. so I definitely don’t worry about it because I don’t write anything that I have to worry about 🙂
I did make my livejournal private only because it was just like those paper journals from high school…cringeworthy!
Oh gosh, yeah, this would be a completely different question if any of us had one of those popular blogs… but then none of us would actually be taking the time to participate in the comment community. Hmm, I guess it would be a twitter discussion. Ha ha. Some of those you can tell have been edited… and some… you wish they would. LOL.
It seems LJ is more of a, well, journal community! I was on there for a bit, just to comment on journals, but it felt weird since they were written so privately.
I had a blog before my current one and I didn’t delete but it’s dumb. LOL.
I love Star Wars but episodes I and II make me cringe. LOL
I had a Xanga in High School that was deleted promptly when I realized that most of the stuff should NOT be public. And it was so embarrassing…
I’ve only deleted one post…but since my blog in a sense is used for journaling I enjoy being able to look back and see how I’ve grown in the past few years since I’ve started it…
I get special special points because I knew you BEFORE Rome. Oh and nom guessing those are from Naboo in episode 1.
You do! And that is right!
OK, I knew right away it had to be Naboo from episode 1 and 2, and it must be in Italy, you really got me intrigued so I did some research…is it Caserta Palace? Looks like a really cool place, reminds me of Versailles.
Are you looking forward to the new Star Wars movie they’re going to make? I sure am!
As for old diairies, CRINGE! But sometimes it is enlightening to see how much I’ve changed or gotten over things that used to really bother me, so in that sense, they are useful.
And I have the exact same feeling about my junior year in Dijon, France. I would have done so many things differently had I been a bit older and wiser. But I guess that’s the way life goes, huh?
Yes! That is correct! You win the special prize 😉 I have not been to Versailles, but the gardens were very well maintained! And gorgeous!
I AM! I am excited! I enjoyed Ep 1-3 even though most hated them.
I am happy I am not the only one who feels that way! I wonder if all of our classmates do, too? One thing I would NOT undo – all the awesome food I ate! Ha!
LOL – cool! I loved all the SW movies. I have so many favorite lines.
I think everyone feels that way to some extent – wishing we had somehow taken more advantage of when we were young, but were too young to realize all the freedom we had. It’s funny because I can see my son (first year college student) doing the same thing, and I bet years to come he’ll wish he’d done more going out and having fun and a bit less studying…but am I going to tell him to study less? No way! 😉
Actually, I did delete an old blog. I used to write a medical blog and often wrote about experiences in my clinic. I tried to keep it as anonymous as possible, so no one could identify themselves but still I was a little nervous about HIPAA. And then I started to get trolled, in response to a comment I posted on a running blog. It was awful. This person bombarded me with horrible messages. So between both issues, I deleted the blog. It was hard to do, because I love to write and blogging is such a great outlet for me. A few years later, I started my new blog about running. I’m hoping not to have the same experience!
Ugh! I am sorry you had to go through that! I have heard some horror stories about trolls online being relentless on people’s blogs 🙁 It sounds awful!
That’s funny because I tossed my paper Jr High/HS journals too! Beyond cringe-worthy. My (morbid) thought was that if I died I would be horribly (posthumously) embarrassed. hahaha (?!?!?!)
Yeah, super glad FB wasn’t up until I was finishing grad school. And while I had (have?) a LJ for my college days, that ish is locked down where no one can see it.
yes! omg. if my thoughts had a public audience when i was a teen? heaven help us all.
i do still have all my journals from middle school, high school and college. they are mortifying. but they keep me grounded. or at least i like to imagine they do.
i’ve never thought about deleting old posts. maybe i should do a once-over and see if i ought to 🙂
So did you delete your old Rome posts or just keep them hidden? Now that I have a real job, I made a lot of my old posts private, but I keep them as documentation of that point in my life. I agree though, a lot of the old things I’ve written don’t represent who I am now, but I wouldn’t want to get rid of them! (It would feel disingenuous, like I was trying to pretend it never happened.) That being said, I am relieved to hear that you also pitched your old journals because I did the same thing over break when I was cleaning out my old room in my mom’s house. I felt bad doing it, but I think it’s better this way!
Do you keep any journals besides your blog?
They are still public. You can get to them via the archives link. But I doubt many people go there. 😉 And exactly – it feels disingenuous to delete them, or to go back and change things drastically. I get making things private for work reasons though. I try hard to keep my blog private from work. I don’t keep any other journals. Do you?