On e-hoarding

I have decided to get actually serious about redesigning my website and streamlining it in a major way.* I want to lighten it up, brighten it up and find some focus here. I was honestly thinking about suspending the blog for a bit but I need the website for my book and I do enjoy writing about my family history here, so I just decided a change might do the trick.

And then I had to face my e-hoarding issues.

I archive a lot here. I archive all my posts but also, until very recently, copy all all of my reviews and major articles as well. There is a lot of stuff backed up on Chasing Ray that is more about my paranoia of suddenly disappearing from the internet (it's insane, I know) then actually needing to be here.

It has to go.

So, just like we clean out our closets, I am cleaning up my website. I'm not going to worry about deleting everything, but more importantly, I'm not going to worry about copying everything here in the future. I'm going to put up my posts and if I think the world might like to know about an article or review then I'll link to it and that will be enough. And if something disappears from the internet then I need to LET IT GO.

It's like clinging to clothes from high school; embarrassing and stupid and not who I want to be (or how I want to live).

The thing about e-hoarding is that no one else can see it. No one knows about the dead bookmarks I have, or old articles cluttering my hard drive, and few even wander around the web site enough to see those reviews from forever ago. But I know and I can't stand it. I want it all gone and I want the compulsion that makes me keep all this junk gone as well.

It's a little change in the grand scheme of things but a bright one and in the midst of winter, bright things are always good. :)

*This means that I am happily paying Sarah Stevenson to redesign my website as I can't write code to save my life. Thank goodness she knows what she is doing.