Do You Ever Wonder What Happens to Your Old Articles?
By: Smillew Rahcuef
Tags: Inspiration, Writers Life, Writing, Writer, Blue Insights

Do You Ever Wonder What Happens to Your Old Articles?

I just scrolled back to my first one and got scared

All my articles on one picture by Nana Smirnova on Unsplash

I think old posts are hiding inside a server, in the middle of the arctic circle, or somewhere cold enough to freeze a phoenix. In this cold, dry place, they regroup, their words gather together, mix up their letters, and try to stay warm. Sometimes, at the cost of losing any meaning, they might have had.

Some pieces are sitting in a circle, trying to warm their paragraphs at the fire of a dead publication with only a few followers left.

Some pieces have many scars. They were edited too many times. The tags changed by 180 degrees, as the author was, unsuccessfully, trying to find a safe orbit around a publication. They finally got confidentially published, far from the bright lights, a shooting star briefly visible in the firmament.

Some articles might still fight. They try to stay strong, waiting for a determined reader to discover them. One ready to scroll down for a few minutes until a title catches their eyes. These readers are 2.0 gold-diggers, surfing the internet to find bitcoin nuggets on a lost page of a lost blog.

Here’s a request to you, dear Reader, next time you’ll appreciate someone’s work, take the time to dig into their archives. You could find a hidden gem somewhere.

But, please, don’t do this with mine.

When I go through the records, I click faster at times, trying to avoid the very view of some titles. Too many memories attached, too many hours (days?) facing the piece, trying to make it better. Or the exact contrary, I know too well how fast I wrote it, how little I edited it, and what a monstrous thing it can be. I wasn’t always consistent in my use of grammar checking applications back then.

I look at some of my first articles sideways because they lack a picture (can you imagine?!), or the picture isn’t formatted as it should. I’m a bit ambivalent on this one. Each platform has its codes one needs to learn. I could go back and edit according to my current knowledge, or leave them as they are, a testimony of my youth. It’s also a testimony that things could be different, that codes are not to be followed sometimes.

Some pieces feel the loneliness coming with the absence of views. They resigned themselves; I guess.

Some stories are waiting for a good segue to be found again. At least they’ll bond with another article through something more than a link, an hyperlink.

Some articles were of the utmost importance when I wrote them. I had something to say. But once I said it, I prefer to pretend not to know them anymore.

The same way my daughter pretends not to know me when I start singing during our walks in the park.

I’m not sure why I don’t want to read my older articles. I’m a bit scared of finding them meaningless, maybe. It’s like looking at a past-love and wondering how you could ever be attracted to them. We change, things change, and some are better staying in the past.

I’m also afraid of the emotions I could find. After all, I wrote some of the posts to get these emotions out. Reading the sentences might bring everything back inside. Maybe I should; it could help to digest them.

Or I should keep on writing new pieces. It sounds, on the one hand, like evading the reality of my past but, on the other hand, exploring some more of my subconscious.