We all have our reasons for blogging; for being part of the social web; for making our footprints in the virtual world.
I don't "blog for money."
What I mean by that is that I don't write because I am expecting someone to pay me for my words; I write because I am leaving a trail of footprints.
Maybe those footprints will reach someone and touch their life; maybe someone else's footprints will reach me and touch my life.
I'm not entirely sure who is going to come across those footprints... what I do know is that those footprints can have life-changing power, in some ways... regardless of whether they are my footprints, or someone else's footprints.
I have no attachment to anyone finding them, just an attachment to making them...
Let Me Tell You a Story...
I originally met Mrs. Denmarkguy in a back yard in Los Angeles when I was thirteen and she was eight. Our respective fathers "had business," and I was left at their house while the adults were "doing adult things." This happened in 1973, in the early summer of the year where I later ended up moving with my mother to Spain, because my parents were divorced.
A very long story for another day goes here, but the super abbreviated version is that an awkward teenager from Denmark and an 8-year old girl from California became friends. Trust me, there's much more to it than that... but let's keep it brief.
It was very much a chance meeting. What are the odds that a boy from Europe would be in a Los Angeles back yard, at a particular moment?
Seven years later, that boy was twenty, and arrived in Texas to go to University. Through an odd series of coincidences, my mother somehow got a hold of — and sent to me — that girl's (who was now 15 and in high school in Colorado) contact information as "people I might know in the USA."
We actually exchanged a fair number of letters around 1982-83... and then lost touch... in that way people tend to, when they are of high school/college age and life is moving so fast.
And so, we fast forward to the early 2000's when I was fairly entrenched in the early social blogging movement and "leaving footprints" around the web... because I knew they would lead me to someone. One day in early 2003, I did my usual round of looking at interesting blogs... and came across one that "spoke" in a comfortingly familiar way. Although there was no name and no picture and only vague hints at gender, I realized somehow that I had (almost certainly) accidentally stumbled upon the "footprints" of my childhood and later college friend.
I sent a slightly cryptic 3-word message: "Is that you?" knowing that it would either awaken a memory, or be meaningless to the recipient.
And so, here we are, married and living in the Pacific Northwest... a connection that was made, went in separate directions, reconnected, went in separate directions... and reconnected permanently in 2003.
All because of the power of these "footprints" we leave.
The web is a wondrous and amazing place, and even though many people see it purely as a place of information and entertainment... it is so much more than that. As far as I am concerned the human web is far more interested than the informational web. Here, we have billions of stories at our fingertips... and isn't that what life really is? Stories?
Stories Connect Us...
For millennia, humans have sat around fires and shared stories in the oral tradition. Whereas they certainly share practicalities, most of the memorable stories are those of people and their lives.
I have many other "footprint" stories, but the story of "How I met Mrs. Denmarkguy" is the most poignant.
Which is where I am going to loop back to the title of this post.
One of the things that most appealed to me about Hive (aka "Hive 1.0") when I first found it five years ago was this idea of the "immutability of the blockchain," and how that concept seemed like a perfect setting for a blog of sharing stories and memories.
Most venues tend to come and go. Or they purge their content after a while. Or they hide it behind paywalls. Or they make you subscribe for "just $9.99 a month" or all your stuff is lost.
All of which are options that don't lend themselves well to creating a "Vault of Memories."
Perhaps the idea of saving "snippets of life" is a deeply self-indulgent practice. On the other hand, it often ends up being precisely those kinds of snippets that tell a story about a time in the human experience that can NOT be gleaned from a newspaper article. Ironic, isn't it? So often "just the facts" don't actually tell us a story at the depth we were hoping to find.
Just waxing mildly philosophical and melancholic this evening...
Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your week!
How about YOU? Do you ever consider what you post here as being in "long term storage?" Have you ever considered Hive as a "vault for Memories?" Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220200 00:09 PST
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