Thinking about my journals

 The last couple of weeks I have been thinking about my journals that I have kept over the years. This blog is one of them. As I was thinking about things I have written in the past I thought about the stories that I had written about the cows and the fact that I lost the thumb drive that they were stored on. I remembered posting them on this blog and checked to see if I still have access to it, which to my delight I still do. I am glad that the stories I wrote are still here, that they were not lost with the thumb drive, another reason to keep a journal, and to keep it in more than one format. Barb and I talked about what we would do if our home burned down, related to things we would like to change about our current home. As I thought about this loosing the home doesn’t necessarily concern me, yes it would be a difficult trial, however, as I think about that possibility the items that would be devastating to lose are things like our journals. Of all of the possessions I can think of that I would really hate to lose, journals, family videos, pictures, this type of things are the ones that would make me the most sad to lose. When my mom’s basement flooded, those are the things that we lost that were the hardest.... for example, all of the letters that I wrote on my mission are all gone, along with the letters that I received from my family. Today, with e-mail, many if not all of those letters would have been preserved, at least all of the electronic letters. This blog would survive such an event. Yes things can happen to electronic writings. Which is why I am now convinced that keeping more than one format is a good way to preserve our journals. I look forward to reading through some of what I have written in the past. There is much that can be learned from looking back at the person we were.