I was going to write one of two posts. This is the one I didn’t plan out, nor ever want to write.
Three and a half years of seagurs blogs, photo gallery updates, hosted audio files have all been deleted. Everything that the Internet knew of me was erased.
I have no one to blame but myself. All of this started when Dad canceled 1and1 payments for the domain and hosting for his business. Unbeknownst to him he took out everything I had because I was piggybacking on his account. I should have done regular backups, I should have been on my own hosting plan, I should have been more proactive…I should have done a lot of things.
When seagurs was inaccessible I was torn. Was this my chance to start fresh or walk away from it all together? I have recently wondered what it would be like to shut down the blog, but in that story I could always return to it with my files intact. However, not having it accessible was forcing my decision to face a cold truth: it could all be lost.
I realize that what I lost wasn’t important. I lost 1’s and 0’s, non-physical things. Still, I lost years of memories. I have spent countless hours going through old blog posts, reading about the experiences I have had, the highs and lows of my life as it was an in depth journal into my life.
Since I started seagurs I changed jobs, moved into a condo, got engaged, got married, been to Cuba and Mexico, traveled from BC to Saskatchewan for concerts and many other memories and allowed me to grow as a person.
Can seagurs be the same or is the archive what defined the site?
It will never be the same. However like a show cut off in it’s prime, it will live forever in your memory (and occasional web-cache’s) as something to aspire to.
Another comparison that I made recently, was a fire. If I lost all my digital data in a fire… and I mean ALL… I would lose a lot of photos and files. But what are their true worth?
Memories are more meaningful when shared with friends, than when shared with a monitor.