I’ve been doing archiving again today, downloading local copies of things that previously existed (in versions accessible to me) only on the Internet.
The thing about archiving is that it *hurts*. Not having done it–the moment when you want to remind yourself how something went and find it isn’t there to tell you, will never be there again–hurts a lot more, so I keep doing this. My past is valuable to me and I want to keep hold of it, have it available, and yet it always hurts to immerse myself in it.
(Today I’m saving works of fiction, works I think I would miss if their links rotted. (Some of them have already rotted. Most were salvageable through the Internet Archive. But only most.) I didn’t think that would hurt, but it turns out that it does, that they evoke the time periods I read them in.)
I know a lot of people hate their past selves, for their ignorance and foolishness. I think this is another version of that impulse, but I don’t hate past-me.
I don’t hate *her*. I hate the people who did this to her.
I think that’s a lot of the problem. I think maybe a lot of the pain of archiving isn’t inherent to the task in general, but because most of the stuff I’m archiving–this project and previous projects–is from around my late teens, give or take, and I was in a lot of pain then. A lot of it I hardly acknowledged at the time, or if I acknowledged it I shrugged and figured that was just how things were.
Maybe it’s good for me to immerse myself in the past, sometimes, if only to show myself how far I’ve come.
aaaaaaaahhhhh
I have reached a series that–while it has many good parts, and I still have plans to finish reading it someday–also brings up a whole lot of baggage
and a large part of the baggage is feeling like I’m not allowed to complain about it
aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh
Tags:
#vagueblogging #I can’t even really get angry at anyone involved #the worst part is knowing they weren’t even wrong to do it #knowing I really *didn’t* deserve consideration #oh look an update #amnesia cw? #sexuality and lack thereof
Brinens and Things 
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