RE: What to do with a draft once you outgrow it

I have this idea, this notion, of what my blog's narrative is and I'm trying to continue that narrative in a consistent way. But yesterday I realized that maybe I no longer want to continue that narrative!

Meadow touches on something I've struggled with for years. I don't want to use the word branding, but the niche or as Meadow says the narrative of my blog seems to be always shifting. What got me through the day today isn't the same as a year ago, and that can create mixed emotions when you look over a blog.

I had to manually paste all of my old posts when I moved from BearBlog to Scribbles, which means I came face-to-face with the past eight- or nine-months’ worth of posts. In the past, I would have deleted these without a second thought, but over the past year a few things changed how I viewed old posts.

The first was a response to a post of mine called What to Do With These Blog Posts. I was referring to the past couple of years of personal blogging that I still had backed up and I wasn't sure if I wanted to add them to my blog or just let them go forever. Out of the blue, I got a few emails encouraging me not to scrap the old posts, including one from my good buddy Matt who told me about a post I had written a couple years prior that really helped him out. To me, that post was a throwaway, just a quick reflection on something I thought that day, but for him it was a bit more. That's when I realized that maybe it isn't all about me sometimes when it comes to writing. Sure, I got to make myself happy, but you never know what post might resonate with someone or help them through a tough time. I know I've had these sort of "A ha!" moments reading certain blogs and I was equally disappointed to see them disappear. So much so, now if I run across a great blog post, I actually copy it and save it in Notes.

The second thing that changed my view on old posts was a poll I ran on Mastodon. It got a much larger response than I ever imagined it would. I asked, "If you discover a new blog, do you go back and read the old posts?" The overwhelming response was "yes."

Now, I believe in keeping your old posts, but what does that say about your drafts that never got published? I'm notoriously bad for this, I mean, the amount of content that I write that never sees the light of day would probably astonish you. In the past, I'd let them sit in my drafts folder and whenever I deleted a blog or started fresh, they just died. Now, if they sit for more than three months, I post them into my Diarium before deleting them, but I do my best to publish whatever I write, even if it's not perfect. I stopped worrying about spacing out my posts and triple proofreading and all that.

The problem is exactly what Meadow talks about, the emotions and interests I had when writing that blog three months ago or even a year ago, aren’t the same as today. I'm not the same person. In the past, it would really frustrate me because I looked at my blog as a book. It was supposed to be one noted, follow a predictable pattern, retain the same quality throughout, and tell a connected story. In a way, it's exactly how I looked at my own life.

Then I ran across this quote and my thoughts shifted dramatically.

Life is not one perfectly manicured story. It's not neat, nor does it have a complete beginning, middle, and end. It's okay to kick around different ideas and explore new thoughts. And I loved the quote Meadow shared from Eve:

Sometimes I have to sit down and remind myself that there are no rules for what I post & I can change the game at anytime!