"It's amazing because, when you're a kid you see the life you want and it never crosses your mind that it isn't gonna turn out that way."

- from Love and Basketball

. . .

Lately I've been trying to appreciate the present a bit more - the people around me, the experiences that surround me... just trying to take it all in and enjoy it while I can. An appreciation for the present seems to go hand-in-hand with an appreciation of the past, so I've been doing some reflection on thus-far short-lived life.

I've been reliving some of the more embarassing moments in my life lately by reading my older archives, and there are so many things I wish I could have changed... it's surprising how many things I chose to forget; I literally felt like I was reading the journal of a stranger during certain periods. Just goes to show you life is written with a pen - I can scribble the bad parts out, but I can never erase them.

This got methinking to the permanence of a site like Tabulas. One of the drawbacks of the "convenient" digital journal is that with a few clicks, the whole thing can dissappear. One server crash, one bad burned CD, a drunk decision... you can literally wipe out someone's history with a few clicks. One of the best consistent decisions I've made is to never delete my journal archives - always keep them, even if it's painful to read them - I gotta remember everything I've learned. I'd hate to backtrack.

Ten years, in digital years, is a long time. Ten years ago, the Internet was still nascent - we were largely living in closed-off gated communities like AOL and Compuserve... ten years from now, how will the web look? I don't doubt the giants will be alive - Yahoo!, Google ... but how will smaller companies fare? How can sites like Tabulas ensure that the data stored within its ecosystem is still faring well?

If I am truly interested in developing a platform that can serve to document the aural, visual, and textual history of one person's life, the platform and the organization behind it needs to be able to survive 100 years. It should be developed with that in mind.

So many things to think about ...