This blog has been around a long time. So long, in fact, that when I started it, I was still purposely using lower case i’s for relaying my thoughts. I was reminded of this – along with many half-forgotten sentiments – while preparing to write my previous post.

In recent years, it has occurred to me several times that the blog’s design could use a modern makeover – and each time, I give it a little thought and then land on not revamping it.
That decision encompasses choosing not to go back and correct those lower case i’s. 
There was a reason behind them, though I never explained it to readers.

My recent memoir unburied my earliest inclinations toward the unconventional usage. In a 1998 message to a new long-distance pen pal, having set up an email account for the first time just months prior, I gave my reason for acquiring the habit:

I determined email was a poor substitute for face-to-face time with friends, and that, as my personal acknowledgment of email’s limitations, I would refer to myself in my messages with the lower case instead of capital i.

More than twenty years later – but before I rediscovered the original rationale – a good friend who’d checked out the blog received this explanation from me:

This is a style choice i adopted in the 1990s. Just because i liked it. To me it symbolized that i’m one person in a world of millions, just as important but no more important than anyone else.
(I’ve been told by another blogger that it could be harming my blog’s SEO because of some filter for appearing uninformed or unserious.)

I hadn’t been aware of the shift in my reasoning. The quirkiness of it as well simply appealed to me.
Part of what prompted me to return to convention is in the parentheses, but a more important factor was finally feeling ready for the legit self-assertion of writing the book. 

Rivers has a lot to say about memories we keep and those we discard – consciously as well as unconsciously. It also reveals a lifelong urge to preserve. Lately that urge has been infused with a greater focus on preserving only what *really matters*. 

There could hardly be a more concrete illustration of having to make that distinction than the home decluttering kick I’ve been on lately, with its contemporaneous curating. I like the (simpler) term ‘simplifying’ even more. It fits with a mantra I keep in mind whether tidying digital files or sorting closets: retrieval is everything. Neither things nor memories are much good to me if I can’t find them.

The same goes for keeping my writing notes organized – so that I’ll be able to access later the most critical of the all too fleeting thoughts and ideas. When inspiration is kicking in, it can feel like being under a spell. But for anything to come of it after stopping to make breakfast, I need my notes.

Both digital and physical organizing bring to mind another quote from the book:

As I sit down to show you what happened, I feel an urge to run away from the laptop and do something easier, less fraught, like organizing a closet. Well, maybe that’s not a bad metaphor for what I am doing. It starts off messy – *I* feel messy – yet there’s hope I’ll be able to bring some order.

What I find satisfying about these varying types of tasks  – including thinking through my I’s and why I won’t change the old ones – is what they have in common.They preserve history, bring clarity to disorder, and shed the unneeded.

Worthy goals, in my eyes.