Everything not saved will be lost.
Philosophical. Deep.
And at the same time, it is simply a fact. A reality of the technological age, often learnt the hard way. A truth understood by the historian and the archivist, pulling timelines together as lines fade away in time.
This world is temporary. Nothing is permanent except Allah. And yet, we save things anyway.
I’ve never been an archiver.
I never caught ‘em all. I never collected stamps or coins or country eraser flags. I would have loved to own the entire Animorph or Magic Treehouse series but my mum would never let me get that obsessed.
Maybe that same fear of obsession has also limited any self-documentation tendencies. I might have been wary of believing I’m important enough to have anything like a public persona.
At the same time, being present in the moment has always been important to me. It’s great for the moment. But with bad memory, it’s not so great for self-reflection and telling stories.
with 30+ years behind me now, there is much I have not saved and lost. Part of me is okay with that. Another part is wistful. And the final part is afraid of losing even more.
the thing is that I’ve been writing since I was 8 – probably earlier, but I actually still have my handwritten journal from Primary 3 to prove it.
since then, I’ll admit I’ve not been the most consistent writer. But equally, I never stopped writing.
It’s just all spread out across:
- handwritten notes
- Evernote
- essays & karangan
- Facebook status updates and notes
- Medium
- Substack
- Blogs (rip tumblr)
- Apple Notes
- Obsidian
- Logseq
- Emails
- Google Docs
- Job applications
…and of course, here.
I realised this when writing about my relationship with my homeland this morning, after a disappointing election night. It felt familiar, but like another page in an ongoing story.
And then I knew why – because it was literally another page. I had already written so much before this, on patriotism and nationalism, on loving my people, on religion and politics…each of these became part of me. Part of my thought.
As I tracked down each scattered scrap of writing, I revisited each moment in time. Each one in conversation with the next.
I saw the next step clearly.
I am a writer, and I have always been. Before I can continue writing and thinking, it is about time I document it all. Archive everything in a single place. The pieces of me that makes up zaid, the writer.
I found a quote by Taryn Simon I really like:
Archives exist because there’s something that can’t necessarily be articulated.
Something is said in the gaps between all the information.
There are threads to be pulled through the gaps and there are entire new ideas waiting to fill others.
But until I know what I have already written, this task will feel out of reach.
It’s time to recreate my body of work. All 25 years of it.
Or – at least – save what has not already been lost.