Oh this is going to be painful…
This week I finalised the Reading Journal Notebook that I created and ordered a printed proof from Amazon to arrive before I publish it. It’s known as a ‘low content’ book in that there’s not much text in it. This is a surprise for me as I usually write SO MUCH.
After I ordered it, I decided on another project.
I have 1498 published blog posts on this website that captured my entire professional history since 2011. Given that I “worked out loud” through my professional career, I have captured an insane amount of information.
I spent a few hours trying to find WordPress Plugins that would extract blog posts for me automatically and tried a couple. However, they extract them into .XML files and I couldn’t figure out a way to be able to put them into a Word document (well, actually, I use Pages now keeping everything under the Apple ecosphere).
I tried:
- IntoRealPages (simply too expensive for me based on the number of blog posts)
- Export Media With Selected Content WordPress Plugin (this one was good as I now have a backup of the posts separately as an .XML files)
- Print My Blog Pro – this seemed like a good one but there were some minor limitations that meant it didn’t work for me.
In the end, I decided to do it manually and spend a couple of hours every day slowly doing this over time. I’m copying and pasting the entire blog post into a Pages document and then editing each post with relevant Headers and other editing functions.
So far I have completed all of 2011, 2012 and halfway through 2013. It’s slow going but it’s been interesting to read what I used to do, how I did it, and all the issues I had in the past.
What is most interesting is capturing the difficulties I had over influencing organisations to consider social learning and performance consulting in organisations. I wonder if they are of any concern anymore or if the conversations have moved on to completely different subjects?
Another thing I am noticing is just how much I have written over the years – both online through this blog (and also a personal blog called Ramblings – which will be the next task to put that into a book too because it captures my life from 2006 – 2011) but one step at a time.
Add to that the TONS of Facebook and Twitter posts; over 500 videos (of my daily vlogging which are now made private in YouTube) plus another 250+ videos on Book Reviews on YouTube and included over 27 volumes of hand written journals that span my life since 1984, I can say – quite truthfully – that I have built up and created a massive volume of work and words in the course of my life.
I had to shake my head in disbelief.
I have bits of myself EVERYWHERE – all over the world, online, in social media, in video platforms, in journals, in presentations, in podcasts, in photos….. it’s MIND BOGGLING.
I cannot erase myself – I have definitely “written myself into existence”.
So in times when I’m hard on myself, or bemoan that “I really haven’t done anything in my life, really” – I can knock some sense into me and say, “YES, YES YOU HAVE! You have been a CREATING MACHINE – and don’t ever forget it!!”
Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com
Hi Helen, I’m just reading you post now. I think it might be a good idea to create Markdown files instead of Apple Pages. A markdown file is just a simple text file that can be read without a special application. The images should be saved as separate files and they can be put at the right spot in the markdown textfile, so that any markdown-reader will show it and otherwise it can be opened separately.
I use the Chrome extension Markdownload to save webpages for me in markdown-format and with the images separated, so I don’t have to do that all by hand.
Then, I use Obsidian to view these pages in a nice way (with the images and tables in the immediately visible at the right spots), but since the .md-files just contain plain text, also other readers can do this. It is just a more sustainable format than something like Word or Pages. I also saw that there is word-to-markdown converter (https://word.to-markdown.com/) , so you won’t have to start all over again
Btw, in Obsidian you can also easily link all your notes (pages) to eachother. It is used widely for personal knowledge management at the moment. I’m not affilliated to them, just a very satisfied user
Hello Mascha and thank you so much for this suggestion. I didn’t know what these were and had a bit of a look around to see what I can do. In the end, I opted to continue to put each one into an Apple Pages as my original intention is to print out volume sets of my blog posts. That is, already I have Volume 1 (2011-2013), Volume2 (2015-2016), Volume 3 etc.
As I go through each post, I correct and edit the text, add the photos and make different headings to add a Table of Contents to each volume.
Then, I will print out the whole lot. And just PDF it. I don’t anticipated needing the files to be in any format because I prefer them printed out.
I will then continue to do the same every year so it doesn’t become onerous. I’m about halfway done already as I do bits every day.
My intention is to not keep it in digital format only – I prefer to have it all printed out in volumes of work so I can put it on a shelf, along with all my diaries and journals – basically a life all written out! I need to see it in physical hard copy format as I want to minimise my time in front of screens or using any digital apps simply because now that I’m not using tech so much, I’m reverting to “old school” methodology. (I’ll need to do the same with a personal blog I had from pre-2011 too)….
I had tried Obsidian in the past and it’s a great way to keep it altogether and access the information as you mention. Thanks again for the suggestion, you gave me another option I hadn’t known about.
HI Helen. I totally understand you would stick to Apple Pages if you ultimately want to create pdf’s and print them all. It’s probably very nice to see and read each post again, and fine-tuning it to make a great print. It’s like creating a photo album. Have fun while creating it!
Thanks Mascha. I know in future it will be unwieldy but I keep thinking how lovely it would be if I could revisit the blog posts by flicking pages.
If I print it on glossy paper too…. 