Rediscovering My Old Blog Posts

Thank goodness internet archives is a thing!

I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2013 (my first post apparently tracing back to September 10th, 2013). Prior to that, I had been using WordPress with a subdomain, the title being Conscious Understanding (I had deleted all my old posts, leaving it with just an update back on September 10th, 2013 as well). The years prior, I had been blogging under various pen names on Xanga, Blogspot, Blogger, and more. I probably started blogging in my junior year of middle school, so around 2004? And prior to that, I had a GeoCities site (does anyone remember those days?! 😂). So, I’ve been sharing content on the web for, well dang, almost 2 decades! That’s almost 2/3rds of my life.

When I first started my own official domain (nessymathew.com), I started blogging on the topics of personal development, business and creativity. So, pretty much what I do now. 😉 Unfortunately though at the time, I had to switch hosting services, and what I ended up archiving onto my computer did not contain my old blog posts (doh!). So pretty much, I thought I lost all that content forever.

Back in 2020, I revamped my website again, and luckily that time I archived my website correctly. Though, the actual blog content itself is hidden amongst some coding (CSS and HTML).

Well now, I see that my website has been archived by the internet gods themselves. So basically, I can go back and read my old posts and rediscover some old gems. It’s quite fascinating to look at!

I’m thinking that at some point, I’ll go back and read each post one by one. Then, I’ll probably save what I like and re-add it to my current blog with the old publication dates. I might even update some of them, with a date on the bottom of the post to reflect that. There’s definitely a few ideas on there that I’ve changed my views on. But, people would probably be able to figure that out with the old dates (at least, I’d hope so!).

For those of you who don’t know, internet archives is basically a digital library of internet sites. My understanding of it is that they use web crawlers to preserve content from the public web. So, I’m quite happy that my website fell under the radar for this! What luck.

I’m not really sure how they decide when to update the archives. The last time they archived my website was back in January of this year. I don’t think I have to worry about it any time soon, since my web hosting situation is pretty much resolved now. But, it’s still nice to know that an archive of previous versions of this website exist somewhere, and that people can actually see the progression and history of it. It’s essentially like having a digital portfolio.

Eep, actually, quick update. I might not be able to retrieve all my blog posts. I’ll be able to retrieve quite a few of them, though it looks like some pages of posts were not saved. Still, that’s a heck of a lot more than nothing. So, no complaints here! I’ll take what I can get. It feels the same as going through your old journals. Even if you miss a few years of them, you’ll be grateful (or maybe embarrassed!) by the few you do still have access to.

This also makes me curious about websites that engage in the backtracking of dates for publication. WordPress has the feature of scheduling posts to be published on future dates. But, you can also backtrack posts, as if you had posted them earlier. I see that this makes sense in the case of, for example, publishing a research paper in real life and reflecting the same date on your website. But, I can also see people manipulating the dates to make it seem as if they are either a newer website or an older website. So essentially, internet archives could expose that. 🧐

I’m in awe by some of the posts I’ve written back in uni. For example, there’s “Start With One”. It’s basically about starting off small (e.g. one minute of meditating every morning) and learning how to maintain that habit before stacking upon it with other habits. Then, there’s “Personal Growth for Young People”, which is about getting into the personal growth community at an age when my peers were usually not interested. It’s oddly refreshing to see my views on some of these topics back then, almost like I’m channeling Young Nessy. Now, I’m… Young Nessy 2.0? 😂

In addition to my website and blog, I enjoy looking at my old content from my YouTube channels. I can see the progression of my music and of my life experiences. I’m happy that I could share a part of my expression and creations with people on the web, and that it will be around for a long time.

I mentioned GPT-3 AI technology in a previous post, but apparently it is trained on some of Steve Pavlina’s old blog content. So you could ask the AI to write in the style of Steve Pavlina or to share some fun facts about him, and it would “know”. Pretty neat, right? I thought it would be cool if AI could pick up some of my content as well, maybe to help others in the future. I think just knowing that these technologies are continuing to be developed and such is also part of my motivation for wanting to share and create more. It’s nice to know that the information may be passively collected (such as on internet archives!), and that someone may be able to find good use for it later on. Almost like being part of a collective research study or database. That might sound dehumanizing for some, but I actually find it quite fascinating!

I’m not exactly sure when I’ll get around to it, as I’m currently in the process of producing an original single as well as a few song covers. This quarter was mainly focused on music projects as well as exploration of health abundance. But, I would definitely like to add some of my old blog posts back onto my website sometime before spring 2022. That would be a fun introspective process to go through. I feel like my past self would thank my current self (or future self) for allowing her to continue expressing herself. My current self definitely appreciates internet archives for keeping a part of my past self’s expressions! Highly recommend it for anyone else who may have lost their old blog posts on their own domain (check out the internet archives!).