“Blog archives are the heart and history of your blog.”
Quoted from About Blogging Guide (Twitter link), Susan Gunelius. This is how I feel about my blog archives and the very reason I keep them rather than weeding through or deleting them as some popular bloggers recommend.
This blog is almost 6 years old (anniversary January 2, 2006). This blog has over 1750 posts. The archives for this blog are extensive. Very few people would want to look back and try to find anything in particular in the archives. It would take awhile. Instead people search using words, not dates.
But, here we have all these nice archives. Built up over years, something to look back on with pride. It’s a shame to waste them.
I’ve been feeling I need to make changes with this blog. A new outlook, something to make it more personal for me again and something that focuses on what I really do know about and experience versus what I think I should be and do. I don’t give myself credit for anything I can do well, instead I pick on myself for anything I’m not great at. So too much of my focus goes into trying to become someone else. Meanwhile, the great things I already have get pushed to the back.
Looking into my own archives, everything I’ve been doing these past 6 years in this blog, is a way to reconnect with myself and figure out how to get where I want to be and how I can change and create something fresh.
Resources to Read:
Confident Writing: What’s Hiding in your Archives and How to Find the Treasure in your Archives
ProBlogger: Updating Old Posts on your Blog
Franklin Bishop: 6 WordPress Archive Plugins