Treasures from the Past

 

"Distant Memories" by Christine Graves via NightCafe Studio

So, an amazing thing happened to me this past week. I found a bunch of old articles and websites/blogs I'd created in the early 2000s. I even went so far as to find one of the very first HTML sites I put together back in 2001. I was gobsmacked, and I never even knew what that term actually meant.

As I've mentioned before, I've been doing this old-school blogging thing since the late 90s. My very first "computer" was a gadget that hooked up to my television called Web TV. I could only use it after 7pm when the long-distance phone rates dropped. Yeah, I'm that old.

My first two websites were FindingtheFather.com and PlantLore.com. Both sites were hosted through a place called Webseed.com. It wasn't anything fancy back then, and now that I look at them, I realize just how far we've come. I spent about three weeks locked in my bedroom, teaching myself how to do HTML, and was so proud of myself when I'd built my first sites. I thought I was the coolest person in my little one-horse hick town.

Once I'd found those sites, I found one I'd done called The Prompt Writer. The very first website I owned, made specifically for creating writing prompts. I did that one in 2007. I'll be going over that site and pulling all my old writing prompts and giving them new life.

I also found one called Creative Writing through a writing community called Today.com. To be honest, I didn't even remember doing that one. I need to really go through that site just to see what I wrote. I have no idea what's in there.

The one that really blew me away was finding a page for ChristineSenter.com. Yep, that was me back in the day. From the late 90s through 2013, I wrote under my former married name of Senter. I got remarried in December of 2013 and in January of 2014, I was writing as Christine Graves. 

I also found two Blogger blogs I'd forgotten I had. One was called Redhead Rants and the other was Must Write Again. The first one was started in 2007 and I have a lot of posts on it. At that time, I was doing a lot of "mommy blogging" and entering blog contests. I had a blast. That was back in the days of Blog Carnivals and Link Swaps. That got me into writing ad copy and it didn't take long for me to learn how to make money writing ad content on my blogs. 

Must Write Again came along between the end of marriage number 1 and number 2. I wasn't in a very good place mentally and that site was created simply to try and force myself to get back to normal. Didn't work very well. I abandoned that site fairly quickly, though I did go back in 2018 and tried again. Not very successfully, I might add.

So, what is a girl to do with all this old-school blogging fodder? You use to your advantage, that's what you do. LOL

I'll be going through all the old articles I found and breathing some new life into them, or at least the ones that are worth a damn. I'm sure there are some that are better left where they lie. I'll also be grabbing all those old writing prompts and giving them a new purpose. I'm kind of excited about those. 

As for the two Blogger blogs I found, I'm completely revamping them. Redhead Rants is now called A Mug of Musings and I'm still working on a plan for that one. However, I'm turning Must Write Again into a place I can be proud of, and am calling it Graves Tales. I'm going to be adding my fiction and poetry over there. I actually have a plan for that site.

Since I'm no longer writing on Medium, I'm planning on putting all my heart and soul into my blogs. I've always said I wanted to try and keep old-school blogging alive, and I think this is my sign to do so. It's been some time since I felt like I was writing for myself rather than writing to make someone else happy. 

No, this isn't something that's going to happen overnight. It's going to take some work, and I'm okay with that. I feel like this is the culmination of a lifetime of trial and error. And I've been given the chance to have all that work at my fingertips once again.

I hope you'll come along and see where we go from here. Let's bring back old-school blogging and enjoy writing again.

Until next time,
Mom Graves!!!!!