Memories

I just finished reading or rather skimming through another book about writing on the Internet – Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works by Janice (Ginny) Redish.

I have to comment that this is a good book, with good recommendations presented in an easy to grab and go method. And I also learnt to write my web content around questions and tasks that visitors to my site need answering or completing.

But is that enough? Won’t people want to read about experiences and emotions evoked by a destination so that it will help them make a decision whether to go there as well? Maybe not.

A look at my dormant website through fresh perspectives made me realise that setting up this website was really more for the satisfaction of one of my goals in life – to have a personal website, space on the world wide web to call my own. While it helps to have more visitors, I will not sacrifice its content.

Why do we keep compromising who we are just to become ‘successful’? What exactly is a successful website? One that garners high ratings and page visits? I suppose it depends on the goals of the author eventually.

The purpose of my site is to document my travels from the planning stage right down to the completion of the journey. I guess I have always been someone who wants to capture my memories as it helps me remember who I was and how I have developed over the years.

But the darnest thing about memories is the inevitable speculation about how life would have been like if one decision was made over another. It also raises emotions of loss – youth lost, relationships lost, friends lost, opportunities lost. Why do we succumb ourselves to such emotional torture by remembering our past?

And yet if we don’t know our past, how can we appreciate our present and prepare ourselves for our future?