Ashes
My journal has been home to 3,251 posts detailing my deepest insecurities and highest aspirations.
I wrote a script to delete all but one of them. A few minutes ago, it finally completed its run.
Starting at the end and working backwards, my script first replaced the text of each post with the word 'deleted' and then it actually deleted the post. I did it this way in case deletion was just flipping a bit that could be someday un-flipped; I hope that by overwriting the text itself, it becomes less possible for someone else to ever restore it. In the twenty years since I began this journal, I've developed a much more realistic understanding of the dangers of posting personal information and private thoughts online - especially to a site that I don't have control over.
I first saved the contents of my journal, of course. I wrote another script which went through every one of my 3,251 posts and 'printed' it to a PDF file so that I could keep the original post's formatting and all of the comments. (I've posted both scripts to my WordPress blog running on my own server in my own home.)
My deletion script took a few days to complete, running for a few hours here and there while I could babysit it to make sure it didn't go haywire. While I was debugging it, it did go haywire at one point, when my 'did the page load' logic failed and it briefly spammed LiveJournal.com with page loads as fast as it could. This quickly got my IP address banned. I apologized to them and they lifted the ban, but that only reminded me of the danger of losing access to my own journal.
. o O o .
As it wiped and deleted each post, the script would display each post for a second or two, giving me a brief moment to read a few words from it and remember it. Watching it evaporate remininded me of the film 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.' As I saw my history go by, I saw someone who was in a deeper and longer depression than I realized at the time; I saw someone who kept trying to find his tribe in ways that were as clumsy as they were optimistic; and I saw a huge number of amazing and supportive friends who made the journey so much more rich. Thank you all. <3
I still miss musewoozle, and Pookie the guineapig, and my grandfather.
I miss you all. Who's still out there?
I wrote a script to delete all but one of them. A few minutes ago, it finally completed its run.
Starting at the end and working backwards, my script first replaced the text of each post with the word 'deleted' and then it actually deleted the post. I did it this way in case deletion was just flipping a bit that could be someday un-flipped; I hope that by overwriting the text itself, it becomes less possible for someone else to ever restore it. In the twenty years since I began this journal, I've developed a much more realistic understanding of the dangers of posting personal information and private thoughts online - especially to a site that I don't have control over.
I first saved the contents of my journal, of course. I wrote another script which went through every one of my 3,251 posts and 'printed' it to a PDF file so that I could keep the original post's formatting and all of the comments. (I've posted both scripts to my WordPress blog running on my own server in my own home.)
My deletion script took a few days to complete, running for a few hours here and there while I could babysit it to make sure it didn't go haywire. While I was debugging it, it did go haywire at one point, when my 'did the page load' logic failed and it briefly spammed LiveJournal.com with page loads as fast as it could. This quickly got my IP address banned. I apologized to them and they lifted the ban, but that only reminded me of the danger of losing access to my own journal.
. o O o .
As it wiped and deleted each post, the script would display each post for a second or two, giving me a brief moment to read a few words from it and remember it. Watching it evaporate remininded me of the film 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.' As I saw my history go by, I saw someone who was in a deeper and longer depression than I realized at the time; I saw someone who kept trying to find his tribe in ways that were as clumsy as they were optimistic; and I saw a huge number of amazing and supportive friends who made the journey so much more rich. Thank you all. <3
I still miss musewoozle, and Pookie the guineapig, and my grandfather.
I miss you all. Who's still out there?