I used to do the Weekly Wrapup every week, but in the past several months I’ve gotten away from writing prompts. I decided to do this week’s anyway because I really like the topic.

1. Describe how much you agree or disagree with the idea that journals and blogs are a way to “save” your life?
I definitely agree that journaling is a way to preserve your life. I’m not sure that doing it online is necessarily oriented that way; it seems to be done more for an audience now than for posterity. I do not agree that blogging is done to save your life, because blogging involves looking externally rather than the introspection of journaling.

2. How often you you reference other blog entries you’ve written? How often do you link to those blog entries as documentation of your history? How often do you ping (if your blogging software has that capability) your own entries?
I reference my own entries pretty often, and I do link to them - mostly just to avoid having to re-explain everything. I never thought to ping my own entries, though I suppose it would be effective. I mostly just use keywords and categories to keep like entries together, so that when I someday get RelatedEntriesByKeyword implemented it will make things easier.

3. How many entries does your blog have? What are the top two topics you most frequently write about? The bottom two?
This is the 1,558th entry in my journal. I mostly write about myself and what goes on in my life, but I also write about deafness a lot. I’m not sure what the “bottom two” topics would be - there are plenty of things that I’ve only written about once.

4. Have you ever rebooted your blog to erase your previous online life? If so, why? If not, under what circumstances would you ever consider it?
No, I have never done that, and I can’t imagine ever doing it. If I did, I would have to download everything and save it in a file (probably burned to CD) before erasing it from public view. This is a record of my life, though, and I don’t want to eliminate it.

5. Share a blog that you best feels “saves” someone’s life? Why did you pick it?
I’m honestly not sure; I like a lot of journals. I’ve been watching Shanni go through a lot right now (not all of it is in her public journal, some of it is in a password-protected diary) and I hope she keeps sharing herself with her readers.