Question

[devi]

Has anyone else ever got trapped reading the archives of their own journal for hours and hours? Or have I finally disappeared up myself once and for all?

Comments

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Not my lj, yet, although I have sometimes read backwards for a month or two. But I used to read through my mono diary sometimes, and shocked myself at the number of references I didn’t get.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Mono-specific things in old diary printouts look odd to me now. Like namelines with keypresses in, for example (like the one directing people to my ad looking for housing in London).

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

You're not alone. ;-) Mostly it's when I'm looking for one specific thing and get sidetracked...

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Heh. The Encyclopaedia Effect!

[stiofan.livejournal.com]

Not my own, but sometimes other peoples. That count ?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Mmm, sort of. :) It's interesting to hear that you read people's archives because I thought I was the only one doing that too - that's something I miss about mono, being able to see when people are reading your archives.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Occasionally I'll get a notification from someone reading one of my old entries, and it's strange to see how different some of them are.

For myself, I will sometimes read back a while on a new friend, but on my own journal it's usually just a 'this day in history' thing, where I check the same date in previous years.

[clarisinda.livejournal.com]

I do that in my Mono diary sometimes. It surprises me how openly I used to write about things :-/

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

God, yeah. When I look back at my mono diary it's all 'oh look at my open and bleeding heart'. These days I'm so coy and careful it annoys me.

[triskellian]

Yep, I've done that too. And it's amazing how often I'm surprised at what I read ;-)

[geeveecatullus.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, sometimes I do that.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Yes, done that. Particularly if I'm looking for an old entry. LJ doesn't seem to have great search options. I'm trying to figure out a way to get all my entries and comments into Google Desktop, which would hopefully make them searchable as well as browsable off-line.

Reading old entries can be surprisingly addictive. I have found myself spending far to long at it, to the point of forgetting what I was looking for in the first place.

Mind you, I've done the same with email messages.

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

I backed up my LJ using a programme called LJ backup, and this makes it wildly easy and quick to search through old entries.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

I'll check it out. Thanks.

[ravenblack.livejournal.com]

I've occasionally done that in my blog-proper rather than LJ (because the blog has search capability). So I find the entry I was looking for, and read it, and think "ooh, that's a funny joke, I don't remember thinking of that", and then end up reading all the other entries that also contain the same word, and ones from approximately the same timestamp.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was doing the 'that's a funny joke' thing too. There's a whole lot of memes I wanted to revive because I get more comments now than I did then. (No, Self, put the memes down and back away from the memes with your hands in the air.)

[queenortart.livejournal.com]

Oh yes... And I obsess about some bit of writing on a regular basis

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

Yes done that. Not for hours, but then haven't written that much. & thought some of my haiku_daily and parodic poems weren't bad & I'm pleased and surprised to think that & not be embarrassed by them looking back some weeks/months later.

It's diary-like so surely one of the points is to look back and be reminded of previous moods & thoughts & events?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's diary-like so surely one of the points is to look back and be reminded of previous moods & thoughts & events?

True, learn from history so as not to repeat it, Santayana yadda yadda.

But yes, I did find a few things I liked which I didn't like when I wrote them. But the reverse is also true. :/

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

No, I've done that. Both I and my life have changed so much since I joined LJ. It's sometimes useful to go back and see how far I've come. And how unimportant some things are now that were very important in the past. It's a good tool for that.

[wyvernfriend.livejournal.com]

Yup, and ended up in tears too.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

*nods* Old bad patches can be hard going. I can't imagine how bad some of yours must be to re-read, though.

[wyvernfriend.livejournal.com]

It really can be the pits. The transition time was hardest to read, cause my journal pretty much starts in the hospital having my tests.

[dr-deadmeat.livejournal.com]

Well as I'd say you're one of the very few people who uses LJ for real comprehensive documenting of interesting things, I'd say you're more than justified in perusing it yourself. You cover so much ground I'm sure it's useful to remind yourself what you've actually done!

I will be looking through your archives soon - when I get a free couple of hours - because thus far I've only barely skimmed your recent traveller's tales and would like to read them properly.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Gosh, thanks. Actually the early entries amazed me because of how little I wrote. I haven't always been this eventful or this verbose...

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Guilty as charged...

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Your entries are short, fluffy and semi-coherent? Who are you and what have you done with puritybrown?

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I can't bear to read back over my old stuff - which is possibly why I end up deleting it so remorselessly from time to time. *I* wasn't planning on ever reading it again, after all.

My LJ archives seem especially objectionable at the moment when most of them are from times when I was happier than I am now (difficult to believe I know)...

[prayinmantis.livejournal.com]

i have done this. but that doesn't mean it's necc. ok, as i can be kinda narcissistic. but is it any worse than going through yr old meatspace journals? hmm? (i've done that too)

[evilrobotshane.livejournal.com]

You bet. Such are the perils of being massively interesting.