Reports from the Wood Snake
A journal spanning the year 2025, named after its associated zodiac.
Contents:
2025-08-25
Once I entered this stage in the website's renovations, I reached a crossroads. While considering starting a blog for this year, I recalled the existence of another I began the last. Should I transfer those old entries? Probably. The page was created and accordingly named "Reports from the Wood Dragon".
While reading that original journal, I got a sense of how strongly I didn't want to keep it. I recoiled at the thought. Was I really so whiny, just a year ago? Did those rants matter to me that much? Good grief, I couldn't believe I allowed anyone to read that then, let alone willingly presenting it now.
I didn't only feel this toward my unbuttoned blog entries but for entire essays formed from weeks of deliberation. Things I was proud of shifted into nothing more than a bitter reminder of the slightly more naïve person I was at the time. This is not a new phenomenon. From the first time I ever recorded something on a page, an unseen countdown began where, at zero, I would be overcome by the need to purge it. Often, I did exactly that.
It begged the question: do I owe my old work its preservation? It's one that prods me as an archivist, even just as a human being. Yes, the least polished, most embarrassing works are still important. A person may change, but the form they had prior isn't one foreign to the human condition. There is always something there, for somebody else.
There have been words tucked away on obscure, ancient webpages that changed my life for an afternoon. Statements written without the preconception that they'd survive to have an impact decades into the future. On more than one occasion, I've been disappointed during an attempt to seek out an article that resonated, only to find it had been taken down. The website had blocked the Internet Archive's crawler. It was gone.
Yet, I understand that even archives don't — can't — keep everything. There are processes to determine the value of records so they can be preserved or discarded. We cannot imagine saving all documents that were ever written, at some point something has to be let go. That sacrifice has to be made for the space to house a better-conditioned, more significant item. There's a certain peace to make with that.
Periodically, I personally back up my own site to the Wayback Machine and my alterhumanity-aligned work to the Alterhuman Archive. I comparatively struggle to make my own website a standing archive of my life. If I don't like that creation anymore: it no longer reflects current standard, my artwork has morphed into something crudely ugly, I articulated points I'd now find ham-fisted, it repulses me to know it's on display. It rests in the back of my mind like knowing a corpse rots within the lining of the walls.
Besides, I'm a backer for the right to be forgotten. "The fundamental need of an individual to determine the development of his life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatised" [source]. Although none of my work contained personal or controversial information to warrant enacting this on any literal level, it sets out the value that things can be scrubbed; they can be forgotten, if you want them to be. You can decide to erase your life to develop or present yourself differently (better?).
I doubt I ever will bring back those old works. It might not be such a bad thing. They're saved, somewhere out there, as web archives, if you were so inclined.