#yknow the idea that all old stuff is vitally important to preserve bc someday ppl need to know how we lived!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mildswearingat4am · 1 year

Text

I’m cleaning out my closet and got completely sidetracked by a stack of my old journals. Because like --

I like journals.

As a kid, I liked having something on hand I could pull out in school to doodle and goof off without looking like it. What are they gonna do, get mad I’m writing in a notebook?

Now, I like the idea of having an older version of me preserved in pages so I can see how much I’ve changed and how much has stayed the same. How excited I got over my first experience with something that’s now routine. Wincing at how totally oblivious I was during a Clearly Very Bad mental health situation. Past hopes, past dreams, past music tastes, you know? Sometimes I put a nice leaf in the pages from past autumn.

At the same time, just because I want the record to exist doesn’t mean I want it to be here. In my closet. Taking up space and gathering dust. When something happens my first instinct isn’t to hunt around for a pen and paper, because that feels like a chore. Why do I have to record myself for future dissection? Can’t I just have experiences and accept the me I am now is fleeting?

But I also know how easy it is to rewrite a past you have no record of. Saying oh, it’s always been this way, when in fact you’re getting Bad again. I don’t want kid me to disappear, just like I don’t want to disappear someday when older me can only vaguely recall the mundane stress the 2020s.

But do I want to undertake the arduous ordeal of preserving me? Now? Today? Carrying the past to every new apartment and house and turning it into a personal history museum?

So basically my closet’s still gross and now I’m having an existential crisis

#babbling moth #actually writing this out has been helpful bc i think i will burn my journals #i don't think i really want them in my life yknow? i'm just worried someday i WILL want them #plus. sometimes journalling is just to get stuff out of your head and u have no desire to reread it #best thing to do with that bullshit is a ceremonial cleansing with fire #tbh i think i was being influenced by the whole. oh look at this historical figure's journals!! look at this grocery list from 1800!#yknow the idea that all old stuff is vitally important to preserve bc someday ppl need to know how we lived!!!#when archiving as a profession is very much. only keep a little. gotta throw away a lot bc there is SO much crap from the past #we literally cannot preserve everything. not enough space money manpower etc etc etc #even digitizing is limited bc digital storage space isn't free and also hardware goes out of date and stuff #and you need a plan for it!! paper decays and file formats get obsolete and you need to be actively preserving not just passively saving #(this is based on what archivist family members ansd classmates have told me btw im not personally an expert)#(i just think it's interesting)#anyway time to plan a bonfire

4 notes · View notes