Today, as I was doing some web surfing during lunch, I came upon a link to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. I’ve been aware of this site for a while, but never used it, and so when I clicked the link, the very first web address that I searched for was of course Southbound Home, to very amused and nostalgic results. Most links to older versions of the site don’t really render the site design correctly, because the majority of the design was done in CSS files which are either long ago deleted, or moved around on my server, so that the Wayback Machine can’t find them. Sorry, Wayback Machine.

However, one design that did remain was the original blog design, sans images. The reason that this design shows up is because it was all coded within individual pages, or at least using software templates, so that the design is hard coded into the page. As I looked through the old pages, two things stood out to me more than others.

First thing being the level of effort that I put into those first pages and designs. The effort that I put into, and the passion that I have for site creation and design today, pales in comparison to those very first days. In those days, I updated everything by myself. By Hand. IN THE SNOW, BOTH WAYS. Now, Wordpress does almost everything, from the posting, to the updating of books I’ve read, to the About Me, and Frequently Asked Questions pages. Now I post all of my images to Flickr, and link to them in my posts; Back then I uploaded and created a new page for each individual set of pictures. I updated what I was reading, watching, and listening to by hand coding those sections, each time I picked up a new book, or switched to a new program. Even the post comments required a separate application.

If I had to do today, what I did back then, to get the bones of this site up and running, I wouldn’t have a site, plain and simple. I’ve told The Wife this story many times, but back when I was living alone for the last time in my one bedroom bachelor pad in Old Town, I would spend entire weekends sitting on the couch, tweaking little bits of code in every corner of the site, making minor changes that only I could have possibly noticed, and thinking that it was the most important thing in the world that I got it right. I would come home on Friday afternoon, and get on the computer. I would pry myself away about dinner time, and go grab Chinese food, and two or three DVDs, and go home, and get right back on the computer. And then about midnight, or sometimes as late as 1:00 AM, I would head to 7-11, and grab a couple of Red Bulls, and another pack of cigarettes, come back home, and start watching the movies, never really paying attention because my head was buried in the computer again. Bed time was 4:00 or 5:00 AM, sometimes sunrise, and then I’d wake up mid-afternoon,  to do it all again, with the leftover Red Bull and Sesame Chicken. Looking back on it now, it was a little  sad, and a lot unhealthy, to be so closed off to everything else, but I’m also happily nostalgic about it, because it is was so exhilarating, creating something, on your own, for the first time.

Secondly, I notice the writing. I am always my own harshest critic when it comes to my writing. Looking back, I see the same problems that I’ve always had when writing, which is finding my voice, and feeling comfortable writing about topics that are relevant to me and interesting to the people that read my site, few that they may be. It’s a constantly frustrating task to feel confident that what you write is important enough for others to take time reading. Picking through older posts on the Wayback Machine, though, you ican see that same tone and insight in some of my posts that I hope I have begun to use more frequently over the last five years. And I also wonder about some of the ‘series’ that I wrote so long ago, and if they would have caught on if I had continued on with them. My weekly SEC Football Picks every fall were the biggest deal to me back then, but Southbound Home’s Friday Word of the Day could have become pretty popular if I’d given it the chance. Right? One last thing that I did notice, though, is that I seemed to be much angrier back then, and I don’t know why. There were quite a few hostile rants about football, work, and current events in the news. Because of that, and the happiness that I currently have, it’s nice to look back every once in a while, but the past will likely stay in the past.