Burn Your Babies

Before I go any further I want to make it perfectly clear that the title of this blog is a harmless saying, perhaps not in the greatest of tastes, but it does have meaning. “Burning Your Babies” in this case refers to doing away with your previous posts when you want or need to purge. It’s actually a video/picture term that I’ve borrowed here to make a point.

How many of us have taken family or vacation photos and have saved every single one of them? You know the ones. Aunt Ida’s head is cut off, or you look just plain stupid, but you’ve taken these pictures of loved ones, had them developed and by golly you’re going to keep them. Even the headless ones. Now, when you think of it, what are you really going to do with these pictures? Put them in picture frames? In photo albums? Probably not. Most likely they’ll get stuffed inside a shoe box and turn yellow all because you don’t have the heart to throw them away. Or now, in the digital era, your hard drive gets overrun with duplicate and unwanted pictures. That’s prime hard drive space you could be freeing up.  How about videos where the family is smiling and waving obediently for hours on end and are about as interesting as watching paint dry? Well, this is the time to burn your babies.

So, now it comes to blog posts. You’ve written the next great American blog and you’re thoroughly proud of yourself. People will flock to your blog just to read your pearls of wisdom. You’ll have more hits than you’d ever imagined. But then you publish your masterpiece and no one reads your post once. It’s like giving a party and nobody shows up. But it’s so wonderful, you moan. I can’t get rid of it, you think. Ah, but you must. People begin to judge you by your posts. When and if you become a popular blogger people will check out your blog often and will read your newest posts. Be honest, if you’ve written something that hasn’t been read by a single reader then chances are it might not be as wonderful as you think (or you may not have used your tags wisely or to your best advantage).

There are times where I’ll go back over all my posts and look at some of my very first writings. I sigh and get ready to purge, but then suddenly an old post will stir up some hits. Interests come and go. Situations come and go. But alot of issues and subjects are timeless. Personally, I have never burned a single baby yet.  I can’t bring myself to do it. But I’m honest enough with myself to recognize that some posts aren’t exactly my best. For now I think I just might allow my babies to rest comfortably in my blog.  So I don’t exactly practice what I preach, but that’s okay too. To purge or not to purge is a personal decision. It’s the headless pictures of Aunt Ida that can hit the trash can.