Now that “The Getting Old Blog” is more than a year old itself, it’s beginning to look messy, like every other one-year-old that’s not tidied up regularly. There are essays and other short pieces all over the place — getting lost amid jokes, cat photos, recipes and also a few stories here and there. And then there’s the literary non-fiction, popping up where least expected and disappearing when I’m scrolling down to find it.
In a sudden fit of housekeeping energy that may vanish and leave me stranded if I don’t seize the moment, I am therefore cleaning up the blog with three new pages. They are headed, respectively: “Fiction,” “Selected Non-Fiction,” and “Selected Essays and Other Short Pieces.” They will each contain links to the pieces in their categories published within the past year that I think worth saving from oblivion.
One page goes up tonight, the other two in a couple of days. Hope they help with exploring the best of the blog so far. Happy reading….
ON BEING OLD 
Such a time consuming thing doing housekeeping! I admire that you can restrain yourself with only three headings too!
I shall think about doing something at a later date!! 🙂
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It will take some time, but not as much as you might think. I only want to identify those posts which can live as stand-alone pieces at some later date — such as when I might want to collect them into a little book. These are the ones which took time and effort to write, and rewrite, and rewrite again. And that’s why three headings will be enough. (Anyone who wants to see assorted photos of my cats has only to click “cats” in the cloud tag.)
Also, I have a strong streak of the anal neurotic braided into my old-lady romantic nostalgia for the past. It was starting to bother me more to leave everything in a state of wild disorder than to buckle down and identify those pieces I wanted to salvage from rolling away into WordPress dead storage! But by all means put off thinking about it as long as you can stand it! 😀
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You do make me smile with your last sentence! Sounds very sensible. If you could see the chaos in my study, you’d wonder how anyone could work there. I did at least clean out a cupboard today and put some things out for the op. shop. It does feel good!
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I’ve thought about trying to corral the mish-mash in my blog but I’m not sure how I’d do it. I think it might also take choosing another WordPress template that gives me more flexibility. Good for you, though… perhaps I will be inspired by your efforts!
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I think it can be done in some way with almost every template designed at least in part to accommodate writers. (Mine is actually called “Writr!”) I’ve just gone through my entire archives of fourteen months today to choose what I will highlight in the new pages, and then to copy the URLS for linkage. Having made this preliminary survey, it also seems clear to me that I should leave a good part of the archives alone, and highlight only written material I’m reasonably satisfied with in its present state. (I think of myself, after all, as a writer, not as an iPhone photographer or joke collector.) Which is what I’ve already done with the completed short stories that are listed on the page headed “Short Fiction.” So you might take a look at that to see if it give you any ideas for addressing your own “mish-mash.” Do let me know if it helps!
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P.S. From time to time, I’ve considered changing templates, but decided not to. I myself am disturbed when a blog I’ve become fond of suddenly looks different, and I fear TGOB wouldn’t feel like my blog anymore if I gave it a visual makeover. But perhaps you feel differently….
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