E-mails vs. letters, blogs vs. journals, etc.

I suppose every generation lives through some great cultural or technological change. I think the most significant change I’ve seen has been the advent of personal computers and how their presence in every home has changed so many aspects of how we communicate with each other and how we store our thoughts and memories as well. I am just old enough to remember the first Apple computers coming into elementary schools. Although we were one of the first families I knew to get a personal computer at home, it was not until I was in high school. Most of my school papers were written out by hand or typed on a typewriter. Letters were written out by hand and sent by postal mail. I didn’t have e-mail until I was several years into college, and that was mostly because my husband and I started our own advertising design business, not for personal use. Throughout college and even afterwards I kept notebooks full of clothing designs, occasional poetry, sometimes house plans, ideas for Sunday school lessons and kids crafts, recipes, etc.

I was talking with an elderly neighbor the other day and she asked if I kept a journal. It was sort of out of the blue and I said no and we went on to talk of other things. Later I realized that I do sort of keep a journal, it’s this blog! But it’s not really the same as having a book that one can thumb through and share with someone who doesn’t have internet. There is something quite pleasing to me about the printed page, whether typed or handwritten.

Just before the boy was born we purchased our first digital camera and I had high hopes of carefully scrapbooking and journalling those early days. Ha! I’m not sure when but I realized that those things were going to have to wait, probably until the kids are in school and I can have uninterrupted time to sort pictures and memorabilia and force myself to glue them down for posterity. Meanwhile we enjoy looking at the pictures and little movies on the computer every so often.

So about the blog . . . I do have it set up to email me each post so I have a copy on my hard drive as well as on the server. But it’s not necessarily the same as having a paper copy. Someday, I’ll be doing something else and this blog will end (not soon). Since I like to try so many new things I often find myself going back to my own blog to see how I did something before. So I think that it might be nice to have it printed out in a notebook format that could sit on the shelf in my sewing/crafting room. And I can’t imagine not ever having a sewing/crafting space. Of course the photographs are all sized for viewing on the web so they won’t print very nicely. But still I’d have the words and the ideas. Hmmm . . .