The Archive Impulse
The first blog I truly followed belonged to Neil Gaiman, when he added the American Gods dairy to his website back in 2001. It was quickly followed by Caitlin Kiernan’s Low Red Moon journal, which quickly metamorphosed into her Livejournal (and has stayed there, even now, after Livejournal has become an archaic thing occupied by Russians and die-hards refusing to walk away). I’m not sure when, exactly, I started my own web presence. The first site I owned was coded by my friend Sean and set up on a friend’s server, a place to flag gaming things. It was quickly followed by a Livejournal, where I didn’t need to know HTML or ask friends for help to make an update. This blog, which turned ten in November last year, was a grudging concession to the idea that I needed a site I controlled more than I needed Livejournal’s friend’s feature. When I was young, you’d occasionally find books full of