I’m in the process of taking all the content from my old blog and porting it into the new blog. Let me just say I am completely shocked at the amount of total crap I have created.
I was writing opinion essays on the web as long ago as the late 1990s. I know for a fact that the stuff I wrote when I was in high school was completely crazy stupid. If you looked at things you said or wrote in high school you would also think the same thing. What’s really scary is that stuff I’m reading from as recently as 2004 is looking like total crap. I’m having a tough time deciding if I should edit it or leave it be.
One major post that stood out as garbage was the one on habit and routine. I was reading this book, “The Fourth Way”, on the suggestion of a friend. The book had a few good ideas which I expanded upon in the blog, but now I realize that 90% of that book was complete batshit. I remember a quote in there about the moon wanting to eat my soul because it was hungry, literally.
Not only is the content of my old posts terrible, but so is the grammar and formatting. The paragraphs are so incredibly long. My word choices were so incredibly painful. No wonder there weren’t very many readers. I can’t blame anyone for not reading a website that was so painful just to look at.
From now on I promise to spell check, grammar check and doubly edit all of my blog posts. In the past I have noticed that heavily edited posts often get more comments than other posts. It’s not that I’m incapable of writing well, it’s just that I didn’t put in the full effort all the time. I have felt the pain of my own unedited prose, and the world will suffer it no more.
I like to keep my old posts around, just so I can feel good about how much my writing has improved in the three years I’ve been blogging. It’s not like anyone reads them, anyway. ;-)