I forget

I used to have another blog. In fact, I think I've had four blogs altogether, including this one. There was another Existential Ennui, which was the first blog I kept back in 2006. That was, essentially, a blog about nothing. Or rather, it was a blog about blogging, with a tiresome obsession with stats and views. It was occasionally amusing, but for the most part I think it's safe to say it was probably highly tedious and testing. I deleted it when I started another blog in 2007, called Off Message, again mostly about nothing. And somewhere in there I also started another, very short-lived blog called Move to the Country, which I think consisted of about three entries.

I mention all this because occasionally I get reminded that Off Message is still out there when I receive emails telling me someone has posted a comment on it. Invariably those comments are spam, like this nonsense:

Author : Garrick Curtis (IP: 83.216.184.132 , poo132veradsl.it)
E-mail : Melia13@gmail.com
URL : http://www.superbowljerseys.org
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=83.216.184.132
Comment:
Indeed interesting blog u got here. I¡¯d like to read something more concerning that matter. Thanx for giving this material.

But they serve as unwanted but in a way useful reminders of a former blogging life. Unwanted, because I've moved on and I don't, generally, do much in the way of looking back; useful because it never hurts to be reminded that you – as in I – can be a right div sometimes. And interestingly – to me, anyway – when I visited Off Message again just now, I realised that I didn't, in fact, entirely delete the original Existential Ennui. I copied it all and pasted it into Off Message. So if you go to what is purportedly the first page of Off Message, then scroll down and click on 'Older Entries', it takes you to all those old Existential Ennui posts, right back to my very first blog posts in February 2006. It's all a bit embarrassing really, but as I say, also useful.