In devel­op­ing a new project on my site, I am forced to think about archiv­ing my work and archives in gen­eral. This comes recently after Ev Bogue & Gwen Bell deleted their sites and switched to inboxes and after I switched to Facebook’s timeline.

Archives, I sort of believe are an idea of the past, print world. Online, we’re usu­ally in the NOW, what are peo­ple saying/doing on twit­ter now? What is my most recent post, our posts can eas­ily be lost and for­got­ten when we become used to solely work­ing in the present (which isn’t a bad thing.)

When face­book intro­duced time­line, I was shell shocked at first. I can see every­thing I’ve done since join­ing in 05. I can see how child­ish I looked then, ho drunk I looked in 07, I can see how my hair’s changed, my art, my writ­ing, my musi­cal taste, friends gained and lost-it’s all right there in my face, which means my friends can all see it too.

At first I was ter­ri­fied and embar­rassed. But then I felt pretty good after sit­ting with it for a while. I’ve changed so much, my life has changed. I’ve evolved, it’s a clear chron­i­cle of my evo­lu­tion the last 7 years of my life. AHA! I thought, that’s why we still exist in archives. I can use them as an example-look I was a lazy, drunk, ass­hole with no prospects, hob­bies or tal­ents out­side par­ty­ing. I’ve com­pletely changed, I’m an exam­ple that any­one can.

I believe that motivation/inspiration are active processes and see­ing an archive of past work builds moti­va­tion. Look what I’m doing! Read­ing over pre­vi­ous work helps me to develop new ideas in the same way read­ing past jour­nals does.

There is a point and a use for archives still. Will this change in the future? Prob­a­bly, the net evolves daily.

Related Posts:

• Incog­nito & prac­ti­cal evolution
• How to be an Outlaw
• Prin­ci­ples of Art: Steal from your­self (aka, every­thing is an artists tool)
• Zen & the art of sacred suffering
• The ulti­mately sim­ple 2 step guide to choos­ing what you believe in.