She wanted to review our email exchanges from our days of courtship but couldn’t find copies of what she’d sent me. Hoped I had printouts.
I’ve been downsizing, so some things weren’t where I expected to find them. Knew I had a loose-leaf binder somewhere.
Nowhere in my studio, though, the one in the attic. No, not the bookshelves or even the remaining filing cabinets or the knee-high closet under the roof. Nor in the first sweep of the loft of the barn. Not in the drawer of surviving correspondence there, either.
Naturally, I was perplexed.
One more round, though, and I came across a crate of binders. Aha! First one had Quaker letters, back before Internet. Second one, other letters. And then, a three-inch thick binder, our nine months of emails. My first emails, actually. How embarrassing … and fascinating! So long ago, it now seems.
Has me reflecting on how much times have changed, too – amazed, on one hand, how much I actually sent out in the postal system and received in reply. Where did the time come from? And reflecting, on another side, at how much today would be a click and later delete … and thus lost. (Printouts? Too tedious, most of the time.)
Another question even has me pondering how much of my poetry and fiction would have simply been shot off as blog posts rather than tediously typed and retyped, revised and condensed into literature, had another option existed?
If my small-press acceptances letters fill three filing drawers, as they do, the rejections would take up 20 times the space. Where would I put them? Or why?
Now, back to the juicy stuff …
Jnana's Red Barn 
Surely you back up your posts on USB’s? That way you can publish the best of them later on… Plus you never know when you need to find one, as you have just discovered.
Many of them, yes. Others are on the fly, to be rounded up later, I suppose.
Reblogged this on Anita Dawes & Jaye Marie.