Last week I realized that some of my blogs weren’t showing up because I had not tagged or labeled them correctly.
So I wasted a couple of hours going back into my earliest blogs, editing them and labeling them properly.
Occasionally I came across some blog posts that looked bad, they just lacked the physical finesse that my most recent blogs possessed.
The pictures looked bulky and did not quite fit with the blog topic. In some cases, the photo totally ruined the vibe of the piece.
Other times it was the layout and the structure of my sentences or paragraphs that needed mending. Some were spread out thin, while others were boxed in.
My gut reaction was to redo them all. I thought that I could rewrite them all, change the photos, and maybe even sprinkle them with some class and linguistic elegance. I didn’t want people to find anything that I had done that was sub par.
But that gut reaction gave way to 3 reasons why I should just leave them alone.
3 reasons why you and I shouldn’t revamp any old blogs.
1. Mistakes can be guides towards better writing.
We may not like it but we all make mistakes.
Large or small, they are made and we cannot escape it.
Yes, in the case of writing we can go back and make them disappear, but by doing that we lose a useful tool.
Having mistakes, written on the page or experienced in life, can act as a guide for us.
A guide to show us a better way.
A guide so that we can make the necessary correction in the future so things don’t look so bad.
Often we don’t think of our mistakes as a good or useful thing, but they can be.
When you happen to glance over old posts, or recall an unfortunate memory, don’t erase or blot it out.
Use your mistake as a guide to show you the way to better writing.
Use them as a guide to make better choices, and a better life.
2. Mistakes can be an indicator of growth.
When I look back at my old blogs, I am astonished at the number of things that I did wrong.
There are so many things that I have seen or picked up on that I could have improved upon.
Spelling, grammar, sentence structure, picture selection are just a few things that I can name off the top of my head, and I know that there are more.
But rather than letting that discourage me, rather than letting that knowledge wear me out, I look at it this way.
Seeing all those old mistakes means that I am getting better.
I am improving as a writer.
My grammar is not perfect, but it has greatly improved since those first blogging days.
My spelling and sentence structure is not a catastrophe. It isn’t always A+ stuff, but it’s better than it was.
When you stop and see how poorly your past writing was, don’t let it tear you apart.
See it as the encouragement it is. You are getting better. You are growing.
3. Mistakes are in the past, move on.
If I spent hours merely tagging or labeling all those old blog posts, I can only imagine how many more hours, or days, I would have had to spend revamping or rewriting all those blogs.
What a waste it would have been.
Why?
Because revamping or rewriting, in this case, is not progress. It is a sign that you are regressing.
While there is a definite need to edit, revamp or rewrite a blog before it is posted, completely scrapping an existing post and making it new is not a good thing.
It is actually a sign that you or I may be stuck in the past.
It is a sign that we are not moving forward.
You could try to be a blogger that is a perfectionist, always updating and revamping old posts. But I can’t imagine you will be writing anything new, un-updated or revamped any time soon.
Chances are you would be rewriting and revamping the same three posts over and over again.
That isn’t progress, it is a sign of degression.
Leave the old mistakes alone.
Move on, write more, write new.
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SANDBOX 