Freshman year of college I went back to visit my high school. I wanted to run into a few friends and see how things had changed. The changes were minor, nearly everything was expected. I looked into the clubs, organizations, and even what some of my friends were doing. The E.A.R.T.H. club I used to be co-president of was having events. The JSA chapter I served as vice president of was humming along. The Academical Decathlon team was well, but they had the advantage of topics many times more interesting than I had the previous year. Plays were still being put on.
Everything was going well and I felt empty; I felt insignificant. All of my work and contributions to the groups seemed to have no impact because they all managed to get along without me. It was as if the world had moved on and forgotten me.
Fast forward four years and I had recently graduated from college. I looked into what the groups I was involved with in college were doing. Things at Newman were going well, except for the stay at home retreat and a couple of other cost cutting measures. However, things at the Patriot were not so good. (I explained my work for the Patriot earlier.) The quality of the magazine had gone down, there was only one person who made changes to the website (me), and things were less than ideal.
A few months later the blog I had made over 100 posts for stopped working. When a new version of Wordpress was installed, no one could login to make any new posts. Multiple things were wrong and nothing beyond the front page could be accessed. The blog I had worked so hard on died. The 133 posts I wrote could not even be viewed. If you want to see sadness incarnate, scroll down and click on the next page link after the last post. Also in the sad website development column, the main website of the magazine does not even have links to the archives of old issues. That means the 20+ articles, 3 front covers, dozens of pictures, artwork, and issue I finished laying out are no where to be found.
I felt something worse than the emptiness and insignificance of four years before. I felt failure. I had failed to create a strong group and find capable people to lead it. There was no trace of anything I had done for the blog or the print edition of the magazine.
A new Light at the End
I bring all of this up now because there has been a promising development. When I was the Online Editor I used a Blogspot blog to make posts anytime the main website was giving problems. Considering our domain problems, hosting problems, and my non-existent experience handling websites this separate blog was a good idea.
A few weeks ago the incoming Managing Editor Andy asked me if he could use that blog account. He has made some layout changes, composed a few posts, recruited some people to blog with him, and earlier today debuted the site. If you check it out make your way to the 2006 and 2007 archives and you will see a few posts I made complete with pictures and tales of a place called Berkeley. Looking at them today I answered one of my own mental questions from yesterday, "Why are there turkeys at Disneyland?" (Answer)
I cannot say things are back to the way they were when I was a student, but I can say they are getting better and I am getting better.
Sounds like you did a lot of positive and fulfilling work with these clubs at both M.D. and Cal.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely a bummer that all of your posts for that blog were lost. I also find it difficult and bittersweet to realize that the clubs I joined at my college have still gone on since I've graduated. Still, I'm sure your contributions to the people you worked with did live on, maybe just not in the concrete form of the posts that were lost.
Also, where the heck have you been? Frank and I have been getting Chris withdrawls.
To clarify, all of the posts were not forever lost. I have a few massive SQL files (100 MB+) that contain all the posts. The problem is I am the only person who can access the files and there is no simple way to make them available to everyone. Also, all of the links to individual posts across the web are now 404 errors.
ReplyDeleteI has been too long since I have seen you. This past Saturday I was at Disneyland. Some people I knew drove down for the weekend. The week before I was playing games at Mr. Mulholland's house. Tomorrow I will be going to a wedding in Virgina and not be back until Monday. We will have to organize a meeting sometime next week.